23 Mar 2013

Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Preview:

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas–business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others–struggle to make their ideas “stick.”

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the “human scale principle,” using the “Velcro Theory of Memory,” and creating “curiosity gaps.”

In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds–from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony–draw their power from the same six traits.

Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures)–the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of “the Mother Teresa Effect”; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

 

Narrated by:

Charles Kahlenberg

 

Link:

http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/catalog/display.php?isbn=9780739341353

 

About the Authors:

Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching courses on business strategy and organizations.  He is the co-author (along with his brother, Dan) of three books.  They will launch their newest book, Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work in March 2013.  Their 2010 book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, debuted at #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.  Their first book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, was a New York Times and Business Week bestseller, and was an Amazon Top 10 Business Book for 2007 for both editors and readers.  Their books have been translated into 28 languages including Thai, Arabic, and Lithuanian.  Chip has consulted with clients ranging from Google and Gap to The Nature Conservancy and the American Heart Association.  His parents are just happy that their sons are playing well together.

 

Dan Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports social entrepreneurs. He is the co-author of Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, as well as two previous New York Times bestsellers, Switch and Made to Stick. Amazon.com’s editors named Switch one of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year, and it spent 47 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. Made to Stick was named the Best Business Book of the Year and spent 24 months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list. Both books have been translated into over 25 languages.

Previously, Dan worked as a researcher and case writer for Harvard Business School. In 1997, Dan co-founded an innovative publishing company called Thinkwell, which continues to produce a radically reinvented line of college textbooks.

Dan has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin. Two proud (sort of) moments for Dan are his stint driving a promotional car called the “Brainmobile” across the country and his victory in the 2005 New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, beating out 13,000 other entrants. He lives in Raleigh, NC.