The cover is bright orange and there is some textural variety with a strip of duct tape across the front; the title Made to Stick fills a third of the cover. It’s a very interesting and attention grabbing cover. Unfortunately, that is where my interest stopped.
Throughout the book, Chip and Dan, brothers, explain that in order for an idea to be sticky (that is, in order for your audience to remember your idea and care about it) it must be simple, unique, concrete, credible, emotional, and tell a story. Setting aside the lack of parallelism in their description, this seems like a very useful way of framing how to form and deliver a sticky idea (and satisfies 3 of their own criteria right off the bat).
What follows however is a very shallow exploration of what each description means. Each chapter is broken down into so many smaller subsections, that the reader is unable to sit with and digest what is being presented. Likewise there are too many examples of each part of a sticky idea without enough foundational work of explaining how or why each part works. What this book would have benefited from is a workspace at the end of each chapter to prompt the reader to transform his or her own ideas into an idea that exemplifies one of the six characteristics of a sticky idea.
The best part of the entire book was the discussion of the Curse of Knowledge. This idea that the more knowledgeable we are on a topic or idea, the more challenging it is to communicate about that idea to someone who is less knowledgeable. This Curse popped up in every chapter and undermined ideas in ways I had not considered.
Perhaps this book was not as impactful for me because I am an educator and an improviser. The concepts covered in this book are the basic tenets of creating a good lesson and crafting a good long-form improv scene. I may be being too harsh.
BINGO – Orange