Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Urban legends travel the world on no budget at all. A memo about the company’s new strategy, backed by a leadership team and a deck, is forgotten by Thursday. Chip and Dan Heath’s answer is uncomfortable for anyone with something important to say: whether an idea sticks is a property of how it’s built, not of how true it is or how often you repeat it. The Kidney Heist — a business traveler, a drink from an attractive stranger, waking up in a bathtub of ice, the missing kidney — has circulated in hundreds of versions for years, and all of them keep the same three parts: the drugged drink, the ice, the punch line. Read it once and you could retell it tomorrow. Nobody can do that with your quarterly priorities.

Chip Heath on SummaryShelf

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die