Smartcuts
How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success
Editorial Review
Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (Wired, Fast Company,The New Yorker, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time. How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm? One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call lateral thinking: to rethink convention and break rules that aren't rules. These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical smartcuts that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like paying dues prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.
Book Reviews
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Wisdom to Share
Disruptive innovation is when the introduction of a lower-cost product steals market share from existing players, like when email usurped postal mail.
Soar principles explain how people from different wakes of life defy expectations and become world-class icons.
There is a difference between rapid, but short-term gains, which we call shortcuts, and sustainable success achieved quickly through smart work or smartcuts.
The common pattern is that, like computer hackers, certain innovators break convention to find better routes to stunning accomplishments.
Pick your era in history and you’ll find a handful of people who buck the norm and do incredible things in implausibly short amounts of time.
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