{"id":2287,"date":"2019-06-06T17:53:11","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T12:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/?p=2287"},"modified":"2019-06-27T18:58:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T13:28:14","slug":"why-people-like-what-they-like-its-maya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/why-people-like-what-they-like-its-maya\/","title":{"rendered":"Why people like what they like? Its MAYA."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">There has been many attempts to define what is likable? What is beauty? Is there a formula? It seems there is and it makes a lot of sense. It is called \u201c<em>Optimal Newness<\/em>\u201d as defined by a research team from Harvard University which conducted a study in 2014 to know \u201c<em>what sorts of proposals were most likely to win funding from prestigious institutions such as the National Institutes of Health\u2014safely familiar proposals, or extremely novel ones? They prepared about 150 research proposals and gave each one a novelty score. Then they recruited 142 world-class scientists to evaluate the projects. The most-novel proposals got the worst ratings. Exceedingly familiar proposals fared a bit better, but they still received low scores.<\/em>&nbsp;\u201c<em>Everyone dislikes novelty,\u201d Karim Lakhani, a co-author, explained to me, and \u201cexperts tend to be overly critical of proposals in their own domain.\u201d The highest evaluation scores went to submissions that were deemed slightly new.<\/em>\u201d writes&nbsp;<strong>Derek Thompson<\/strong>&nbsp;in his 2017 article for&nbsp;<strong>The Atlantic<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;<em>The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"810\" height=\"456\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6pY7EjqD3QA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Derek<\/strong>&nbsp;talks about&nbsp;<strong>Raymond Loewy<\/strong>&nbsp;the legendary designer and his evolution into this larger than life figure who, Cosmopolitan magazine wrote \u201c&nbsp;<em>has probably affected the daily life of more Americans than any man of his time.<\/em>\u201d&nbsp;And Loewy based most of his work on a simple principle he had arrived upon through his observation that &#8220;<em>consumers are torn between two opposing forces: neophilia, a curiosity about new things; and neophobia, a fear of anything too new. As a result, they gravitate to products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible. Loewy called his grand theory \u201cMost Advanced Yet Acceptable\u201d\u2014maya. He said to sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.<\/em>\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can see the play out in industry after industry, from Hollywood hits to cable television, to music playlists, baby names to Silicon valley. We know AirBnB was called the eBay for Homes, Uber AirBnB for cars and now scores of startups &#8211; Uber for \u201csomething\u201d. We all remember the&nbsp;<strong>Steve Jobs<\/strong>&nbsp;unveiling of the iPhone at Macworld in 2007 &#8211; he kept talking about 3 revolutionary product in their class&nbsp;&#8211; \u201c<em>A wide screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary new phone and a breakthrough internet communication device<\/em>\u201d over and over till he asks&nbsp;\u201care you getting it?\u201d He was connecting the familiar with the excitement of the new.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"810\" height=\"456\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e7EfxMOElBE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Derek<\/strong>&nbsp;quotes&nbsp;<strong>Max Planck<\/strong>, the theoretical physicist who helped lay the basics of quantum theory, as saying \u201ca new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derek delivered a lecture on this topic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is the link to Derek Thompson\u2019s article :<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything.<\/strong>What makes things cool <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2017\/01\/what-makes-things-cool\/508772\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2017\/01\/what-makes-things-cool\/508772\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been many attempts to define what is likable? What is beauty? Is there a formula? It seems there is and it makes a lot of sense. It is called \u201cOptimal Newness\u201d as defined by a research team from Harvard University which conducted a study in 2014 to know \u201cwhat sorts of proposals were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/p><div class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/why-people-like-what-they-like-its-maya\/\" class=\"btn btn-small btn--dark btn-hover-shadow\"><span class=\"text\">Continue Reading<\/span><i class=\"seoicon-right-arrow\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,74],"tags":[70,77,167],"class_list":["post-2287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-learnt-today","category-sales","tag-alwayslearning","tag-sales","tag-maya"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Subhanjan Sarkar","author_link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/author\/subhanjan\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paX7jg-AT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}