Imitating recent successes is a game that everybody knows how to play. But seeing the next big thing before anybody else sees it is far more valuable... It means being a little bit wrong at just the right time.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Business Hits Leaders Popularity Success

This long-tail distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Business Derek Thompson Economics Economy Success

Quality, it seems, is a necessary, but insufficient attribute for success.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Creativity Derek Thompson Hit Popularity Quality Success Viral

It is not merely the feeling that something is familiar. It is one step beyond that. It is something new, challenging, or surprising that opens a door into a feeling of comfort, meaning, or familiarity. It is called an aesthetic aha.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Pop Culture Popularity Science

Initially [my favorite books] seem to immerse me in another life, but ultimately they immerse me in me; I am looking through the window into another person’s home, but it is my face that I see in the reflection.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Books Familiarity Favorite Books Popularity Reading

In the psychology of aesthetics, there is a name for the moment between the anxiety of confronting something new and the satisfying click of understanding it. It is called an 'aesthetic aha.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Aesthetics Art Neophilia Neophobia Understanding

The line from psychologists is, if you’ve seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Familiarity Heredity History Popular Science Psychology Survival

It begs for a gospel of perseverance through inevitable failure... There is no antidote to the chaos of creative markets. Only the brute doggedness to endure it.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Creative Creativity Derek Thompson Dogged Viral

Posting dramatic charts or funny pictures is good and giving people smart reasons to believe what they already think is great.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Business Popularity Social Media

The trick is learning to frame your new ideas as tweaks of old ideas, to mix a little fluency with a little disfluency—to make your audience see the familiarity behind the surprise.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Advice Business Ideas Popularity Quotes

Some consumers buy products not because they are ‘better” in any way, but simply because they are popular. What they’re buying is not just a product, but also a piece of popularity itself.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Business Consumers Fans Popularity

Cultural products will spread faster and wider when everybody can see what everybody else is doing. It suggests that the future of many hit-making markets will be fully open, radically transparent, and very, very unequal.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Culture Forecast Hits Marketing Popularity Prediction

When something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought, to the object of their thinking.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Derek Thompson Thinking Thought

People gravitate toward products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable--MAYA.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Creation Creative Derek Thompson Hits Maya

Most consumers are simultaneously neophilic, curious to discover new things, and deeply neophobic, afraid of anything that is too new. The best hit makers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old, anxiety and understanding. They are architects of familiar surprises.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Creation Creative Creative Thinking Hit Maker Ideas Popularity

This might be the most important question for every creator and maker in the world: how do you make something new if most people just like what they know? Is it possible to surprise with familiarity?

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Creation Creative New Viral

This sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Creation Creative Derek Thompson Hit Popular Selling Skills Selling Tips

To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Economics Marketing Marketing Advice Selling Selling Skills

It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody things you are wrong.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Derek Thompson Economics Economy Investment Market Marketing Marketplace

It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody thinks you are wrong

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Derek Thompson Economics Economy Marketing Markets

In all sorts of markets—music, film, art, and politics—the future of popularity will be harder to predict as the broadcast power of radio and television democratizes and the channels of exposure grow.... The gatekeepers had their day. Now there are simply too many gates to keep.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Forecasting Future Prediction Media Popularity

People have all day to talk about what makes them ordinary. It turns out that they want to share what makes them weird.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Social Media Social Media Behaviour Social Psychology

The mere observation that something is popular, or even that it became so rapidly, is not sufficient to establish that it spread in a manner that resembles a virus. Popularity on the internet is driven by the size of the largest broadcast. Digital blockbusters are not about a million one-to-one moments as much as they are about a few one-to-one-million moments.

~ Derek Thompson

Derek Thompson Derek Thompson Digital Marketing Marketing Popularity Viral