42 Quotes by Derek Thompson

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.