Canonical · Negotiation & Persuasion · Book

Made to Stick

Chip Heath & Dan Heath · 2007

"Ideas that persuade and spread share six identifiable traits — the SUCCESS framework — while most ideas that fail to stick lack them despite being just as true or important."

The idea

Two brothers, a Stanford professor and a Duke researcher, asked why urban legends and half-true rumors outcompete accurate, well-supported ideas for attention. Their answer: stickiness has a structure, and it's teachable.

Why it works

The takeaway — recall it first

Thank You for Arguing

"Aristotle's three levers of persuasion — ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic) — still explain why arguments land or fail, and knowing which one is missing from a failed pitch tells you exactly what to fix."

Jay Heinrichs · BookContinue→