Does Your Idea Pass the SAT (Stickiness Aptitude Test)?

Guy Kawasaki just posted an interview with Chip and Dan Heath of Made to Stick fame. It’s definitely worth a read.

For fun, he’s put together the Stickiness Aptitude Test (SAT), for you to see how well you are applying the concepts from the book. Not all questions will be applicable to your specific situation, but you can get an idea of how to interpret them by seeing the point value scores listed by each answer.

Sometimes the right answers are counterintuitive:

Is there someone on your marketing team who fundamentally does not understand the technology that underlies your idea?

(This relates to the “Curse of Knowledge” that makes it harder for you to communicate your idea clearly when you know so much about the subject that you can’t conceive of not understanding its basic underlying concepts.)

And sometimes the questions pinpoint some key approaches to use to make your idea stickier:

Can you describe your idea in the way Hollywood directors often pitch their movies, with a simple analogy? (E.g., the movie that became Alien was pitched as “Jaws on a spaceship.”)

(People can understand your idea better when it’s connected to something they already are familiar with.)

Even if you haven’t read the book yet, take the SAT and you’ll probably learn at least one new thing that you can start applying right away.

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