Smartcuts

How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success
by Shane Snow | HarperBusiness © 2014 · 272 pages

Shane Snow is a journalist and entrepreneur who takes us on a fascinating tour of “How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success.” The book is packed with stories capturing the ascent of everyone from young Presidents, Jimmy Fallon, and Elon Musk—and, of course, the “Smartcuts” they used to get there. Big Ideas we explore include: the power of progress, failure as feedback, creating a deep reservoir, stripping away the unnecessary and 10Xing our thinking.


You can make incremental progress by playing by the rules. To create breakthrough change, you have to break the rules. Let’s break some big ones together.
Shane Snow

“Pick your era of history and you’ll find a handful of people—across industries and continents—who buck the norm and do incredible things in implausibly short amounts of time. The common pattern is that, like computer hackers, certain innovators break convention to find better routes to stunning accomplishments.

The question is, can finding these better routes be taught? …

In this book, I’m going to show you how overachievers throughout history have applied lateral thinking to success in a variety of fields and endeavors. In doing this, I plan to convince you that the fastest route to success is never traditional, and that the conventions we grow up with can be hacked. And, most important, I want to show you that anyone—not just billionaire entrepreneurs and professional mavericks—can speed up progress in business or life.”

~ Shane Snow from Smartcuts

As Adam Grant (author of Give and Take) says on the cover of this book, it’s “One of the most entertaining and thought-provoking books of the year.”

I agree. Shane Snow is a journalist and entrepreneur who takes us on a fascinating tour of “How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success.”

The book is packed with stories capturing the ascent of everyone from young Presidents, Jimmy Fallon, and Elon Musk—and, of course, the “Smartcuts” they used to get there. It’s a quick, entertaining read that I think you’ll enjoy. (Get the book here.)

It’s also packed with Big Ideas.

I’m excited to explore a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!

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About the author

Authors

Shane Snow

Journalist, geek, entrepreneur and Chief Creative Officer of Contently.