Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of Made to Stick pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.

1. Beat the Curse of Knowledge: once you know something, you literally cannot imagine not knowing it, which is why experts communicate in abstractions nobody else understands. Assume your audience knows nothing and translate everything into plain, concrete language.
2. Find the core and lead with it. Strip your message to one essential idea (Southwest's 'THE low-fare airline'), put it first, and don't bury the lead. If you say three things, you say nothing.
3. Break a pattern to grab attention, then open a curiosity gap to keep it. Surprise people by violating their expectations, then make them feel a gap in their knowledge they're compelled to close.

The other 4 — and the full 9-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 7 chapters

The whole summary runs about 9 minutes, read or listened to.

1. The Curse of Knowledge: Why Good Ideas Fail
2. Simple: Find the Core and Don't Bury the Lead
3. Unexpected: Surprise to Grab, Curiosity to Keep
4. Concrete: Make Ideas You Can See and Touch
5. Credible: Help People Believe It
6. Emotional: Make People Care
7. Stories: Move People to Act