Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Business

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Description

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.

Reviews

"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

Author Bio

Shane Snow is an entrepreneur and hacker-journalist based in New York City. In 2010, he co-founded Contently Inc., which grew to more than $30 million in its first three years. He writes about technology for WIRED Magazine, and is known nationwide for speaking about the future of media and writing about innovation for Fast Company, The Washington Post, and LinkedIns Influencer program alongside Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, and Richard Branson-yet, just four years before he was living in Hawaii and didnt own a pair of shoes. Snow has been named one of Forbes Magazines 30 Under 30 Media Innovators, Inc. Magazines 30 Under 30 Coolest Entrepreneurs, and Folios 15 Under 30 Magazine Innovators. A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, his work has been featured in The New York Times, GQ, MTV, and Time.