Derek Thompson Quotes

“People gravitate toward products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable--MAYA.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“Quality, it seems, is a necessary, but insufficient attribute for success.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“When something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought, to the object of their thinking.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“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, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“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, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody things you are wrong.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“This long-tail distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody thinks you are wrong”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“This sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular