Dimensions
160 x 235 x 25mm
How do some startups go from zero to a billion in two years? How did President Obama and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do the world's fastest self-made billionaires have in common?
Common wisdom suggests one must "pay dues" to be successful, whether success means happiness, wealth, skills, popularity, influence, or climbing to the top of the corporate ladder. However, this mentality often prevents progress, dressing Pessimism in Realism's pajamas while enterprising young businesses and individuals cruise by. Students errantly slog through business school to become qualified to start Internet companies. Low-level employees quietly work in the bottom ranks and never move up. Businesses lose momentum and make stupid acquisitions to compensate. But like computer hackers, a handful of innovators leverage "the new" to find shorter routes to stunning accomplishments.
Here, Shane Snow, a bit of a wunderkind himself, explains why kids shouldn't be taught times tables, why the fashionable "fail fast and fail often" mantra of the Lean Startup movement is wrong, and how momentum-not experience-is the single biggest predictor of business and personal success. He debunks the myth that it takes decades of practice to master a skill or industry, and why, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one. Too many of us write off our hopes and dreams in the name of luck, but the world's most rapidly successful people take luck into their own hands.
SMARTCUTS is a prescription for that sickness. It's about how the world's fastest innovators get to the top and beyond. It's about applying entrepreneurial and technological concepts to success, and how by emulation and by learning what the author calls "smartcuts" , we, too, can climb the ladder, grow businesses, and fix society faster than we think possible.
