Derek Thompson Quotes & Sayings

The mathematical challenge of finding the greatest good can expand the heart. Empathy opens the mind to suffering, and math keeps it open. — Derek Thompson

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mark of a good book is that you're happy to come home to it. The mark of a great book is that you occasionally schedule your life to stay home with it. — Derek Thompson

The line from psychologists is, if you've seen it before, it hasn't killed you yet. — Derek Thompson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar. — Derek Thompson

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

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

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

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

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