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Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success Hardcover – September 9, 2014
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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.
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.
From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter--and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Business
- Publication dateSeptember 9, 2014
- Dimensions6 x 0.93 x 9 inches
- ISBN-109780062302458
- ISBN-13978-0062302458
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“As fascinating as it is fun, Smartcuts is an engaging journey through the types of lateral thinking and creative strategies that so often underlie success.” — Maria Konnikova, New York Times bestselling author of Mastermind
“Smartcuts solves a major mystery, illuminating how visionaries and pioneers find faster ways to achieve their goals. With spellbinding stories and relevant research, Shane Snow has delivered one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking books of the year.” — --Adam Grant, Wharton professor and author of Give and Take
“Smartcuts is surprising and awesome. It’s Malcolm Gladwell meets Tim Ferriss. Part Good to Great, part McGuyver, this is a book every 21st century entrepreneur should read.” — Scott Gerber, Founder, Young Entrepreneurs Council
“Shane is living proof that Smartcuts work. He hacked his way into Fast Company, Wired and Ad Age, built a multi-million dollar startup by age 30, and now he’s written his first of what I’m sure will be many excellent books. Follow this guy!” — --Ryan Holiday, bestselling author of Trust Me I'm Lying and The Obstacle Is The Way
“Shane Snow is a fresh and future-thinking voice in today’s tumultuous business climate. You must read Smartcuts if you are a social entrepreneur or would like to be one, because what Shane teaches us most of all is to be “bigger than just business.” — --Soraya Darabi, Co-founder of Zady and Foodspotting
“[Smartcuts] is a manifesto for success for those who do not want to toil away unnoticed.” — Financial Times
“It’s worth its weight in 10 airport business books, in part because Snow is such a clear, beautiful writer who does not succumb to aphorism and business gobbledygook.” — New York Times Insider
From the Back Cover
Serial entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow delves into the reasons why some people and some organizations are able to achieve incredible things in implausibly short time frames, showing how each of us can use these "smartcuts" to rethink convention and accelerate success.
Why do some companies attract millions of customers in mere months while others flop? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube phenom Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon dash to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a midlevel promotion? How do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers beat the norm?
Like computer hackers, a handful of innovators in every era use lateral thinking to find better routes to stunning accomplishments. Throughout history, the world's biggest successes have been achieved by those who refuse to follow the expected course and buck the norm.
Smartcuts is about bucking the norm.
In it, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn multiplication tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.
Smartcuts tells the stories of innovators who dared to work differently and lays out practical takeaways for the rest of us. It's about applying entrepreneurial and technological concepts to success, and how, by emulation, we too can leapfrog competitors, grow businesses, and fix society's problems faster than we think.
About the Author
Shane Snow is a New York City–based journalist and Web entrepreneur, and the cofounder and chief creative officer of the media technology company Contently. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. Snow contributes regularly to Wired magazine and Fast Company, and has written about innovation for numerous publications, including the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and Advertising Age. Snow is a sought-after speaker at technology and advertising summits, and writes for LinkedIn's Influencer program. His work in technology entrepreneurship has been recognized by the United Nations, the New York Times, Inc., Forbes, Details, and New York City's Economic Development Council.
Product details
- ASIN : 0062302450
- Publisher : Harper Business; Edition Unstated (September 9, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780062302458
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062302458
- Item Weight : 15 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.93 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,029,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,160 in Entrepreneurship (Books)
- #10,920 in Leadership & Motivation
- #21,401 in Personal Transformation Self-Help
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow has helped expose gun traffickers and gender discrimination, eaten only ice cream for weeks in the name of science, and been variously captured and escorted by armed guards as he's explored and photographed abandoned buildings and tunnels around the world.
Snow is a board member of The Hatch Institute, a nonprofit for investigative journalism, and currently serves as Founder at Large at Contently, which works with Fortune 500 brands and has helped over 100,000 freelance journalists, artists, and photographers put food on the table.
His writing has appeared in Wired Magazine, The New Yorker, GQ, Fast Company, Advertising Age, The Washington Post, and others. He's author of Smartcuts and The Storytelling Edge, and is now releasing his most important book yet: Dream Teams, a journey through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business to reveal what separates groups that simply manage to get by from those that get better together—and how we might make our companies and communities better by understanding the difference.
Snow has been named one of Details Magazine's "Digital Mavericks," called a "Wunderkind" in the New York Times, and honored as a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. Originally from Idaho, he studied journalism at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
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This book is very well written and is easy read. The author supports a lot of the advice with references to research studies, and wraps everything with inspiring and easy to remember stories. The author also switches back and forth between captivating stories and research findings thus making the book feel like a cliffhanger ( what happened during the third SpaceX launch? What happened after? )
This a book worth reading, however, much like many of the books of this kind it suffers from a survivorship bias. The book describes the commonalities between what successful people do and is very inspirational. Unfortunately, I suspect that there are many people who tried to make side-ways career moves and/or had great mentors, but never truly succeeded, so these people are not described in this book. The author does address a portion of this bias with a convincing anecdote in the chapter on Momentum. However, other parts of the book are somewhat one-sided. Keep this in mind. Regardless, this book is likely to inspire you to try thinking and acting in a new way.
According to Shane Snow, there are significant differences between "rapid, potentially short-term gains, or shortcuts, and success achieved through smarter work, or smartcuts." That is, "an act of lateral thinking with integrity. Working harder [but also smarter] and achieving breakthroughs without creating negative externalities."
Edward de Bono is generally credited with popularizing lateral thinking in 1967 with the publication of his eponymous book. In Smartcuts, Snow has "catalogued the patterns through which rapid successes and breakthroughs innovators have achieved the incredible through lateral thinking. The nine principles comprise a framework for breaking conventions that explains how many of the world's most successful people and businesses do so much with less."
Here are the principles, each thoroughly explained in the book:
1. Hacking the Ladder
2. Training with Masters
3. Rapid Feedback
4. Platforms
5. Catching Waves
6. Superconnecting
7. Momentum
8. Simplicity
9. 10X Thinking
Smartcut thinking offers dozens of practical benefits:
o Reduction (if not elimination) of waste
o Improvement of first-pass yield
o Reduction of cycle time
o Simplification of process
o Increase of agility and resilience
o Faster modification
o Strengthened verification
I agree with Shane Snow: "We can do incredible things by rejecting convention and working smarter. What would happen if we looked at problems like pollution and climate change, racism and classism, violence and hunger, and instead of waiting for luck to strike, asked ourselves, 'How can we use smartcuts to fix things faster?' You can make incremental progress by playing by the rules. [That is, complying with someone else's rules.] To create breakthrough change, you have to break the rules. Let's break some rules together."
In Leading Change, James O'Toole suggests that the strongest resistance to change is cultural in nature, the result of what he so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Never underestimate the difficulty of achieving breakthrough results with lateral thinking. That said, keep in mind this reassurance from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Snow's more recent book, Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart (June 2018), as well as Safi Bahcall's Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (March 2019).
Is a good book and you will use one of the ideas to Smartcuts your way to success.
I think that is the distinctive aspect of this book. It's not just inspiration, and it's not a how-to success book. But with an entertaining writing style, the author reveals and describes principles that can change the way you think about things.
Top reviews from other countries
As for the book, it's a very interesting and pacy read. I'm done with 100 pages as of writing this review and the book continues to keep me hooked.
I would definitely recommend this book for anyone that is interested in success and achievement