I had an amazing microeconomics professor when I was a freshman in college. In the first minute of the first day of class, he asked a question: Why do you always see multiple gas stations clustered on the same street corner? It seems a bit crazy, when you think about it. Why would a gas station owner deliberately position himself next to the competition?

An hour later, we knew the answer. More importantly, in the span of one class period, we had learned that economics is not about money. It’s about a new way of thinking.

That class was full of ideas that stuck with me. They’re etched into my memory—I can remember them clearly 15 years later.

If you’re a teacher, those are the kinds of memories you wish for. What could be more fulfilling than the idea that, decades later, your students will still be moved by the sudden jolts of insight you delivered? Teachers live to deliver those moments.

Question: Does your textbook ever deliver one of those moments?

Ahem. When’s the last time you heard a friend reminisce about his favorite textbook, the way I just reminisced about my favorite teacher?

Everybody has a favorite teacher, but nobody has a favorite textbook. That was the realization that Amy Bryant and I had in 1997, and Thinkwell was born from that realization.

Great teaching sticks. Print textbooks don’t. I’ll explain why, but first let me give a bit of backstory. Over the past few years, I’ve developed a passion for figuring out what makes ideas stick. I co-authored a book on this topic with my brother—it’s called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. My brother’s fascination with the topic came from his research on the marketplace of ideas—for example, why do ideas like urban legends seem to have such an easy time succeeding? My fascination with the topic started at Thinkwell, and the chance I had to work with some of the country’s best teachers. In our book, my brother and I identify six traits that make ideas sticky.

Three of those traits are Unexpectedness, Concreteness, and the use of Stories. And those are three traits that great teachers use instinctively.

• Great calculus teachers don’t dive straight into the rote mechanics of calculus, they surprise students by revealing what’s Unexpected about it—why it’s different from algebra.
• Great economics teachers don’t define terms using abstract language, they give Concrete examples (“Air isn’t scarce, but clean, breathable air is scarce.”).
• Great government teachers don’t reel off historical dates and names, they tell Stories.

I co-founded Thinkwell ten years ago because I wanted to invent a more human textbook. A kind of textbook that would be more memorable, and as such, more useful to the teachers like you who have to rely on them. I wanted a textbook that was sticky.

Amy and I knew we couldn’t pull off this vision on our own. So when we went looking to sign up our first author, we knew exactly where to go—to the office of my college microeconomics professor, Steven Tomlinson. In one of the first videos in his Economics title, he says, “Students often start with the misconception that economics is about money.”

That was the same lesson I learned in his class 15 years ago. I hope it will stick with others the way it stuck with me.