Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

key ingredient behind the scenes of every disruptive product is simplification.

is not just cheaper, but simpler than...

to soar, we need to simplify.

If you want to know which type of wireless speakers to buy, a typical blog—or store—will show you scads of options. Brands. Versions. Specs. Upgrades. Pros and cons. Features! Benefits! STRESS!

Blam will simply tell you that Logitech’s UE Mini Boom speakers are the best.

With simplified costs and no full-time employees, Blam was soon working one day a week, living in paradise, and making more money than he ever did at Gizmodo. Most important, he was a lot happier.

THE THING HOLDING us back from success is our inability to say no.

We can’t keep the momentum going if we don’t let go of the ring behind us as we swing forward.

breaking that weakness and simplifying, Blam became untethered, able to mo...

He got to be the best by focusing on what he needed to know, knowing how to figure out what he didn’t know, and forgetting about everything else.

hackers strip the unnecessary from their lives. They zero in on what matters.

Apple founder Steve Jobs’s closet was filled with dozens of identical black turtlenecks and Levi’s 501 jeans—to simplify his choices.

Dr. Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota, experiments that show that making lots of tiny choices depletes one’s subsequent self-control.

patience and willpower, even creativity, are exhaustible resources.

mind-clearing meditation and stick to rigid daily routines: to minimize distractions and maximize good decision making.

Apple’s iPod won the MP3 player war with breakthrough simplicity,

While other companies touted “4 Gigabytes and a 0.5 Gigahertz processor!” Apple simply said, “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Constraints make the haiku one of the world’s most moving poetic forms. They give us boundaries that direct our focus and allow us to be more creative.

Tony Wagner and the Finland phenomenon from chapter 4? Finland’s education system built a higher platform—a better starting point—for its students by requiring all teachers to have master’s degrees and deep expertise in teaching how to learn.

The second half had to do with what the Finns didn’t do.

Finnish education, in fact, had go...

Finns started teaching deeply in fe...

“Less is more” and “small is beautiful” are common aphorisms in Finland,

students often had the same teachers for several years in a row, developing rapport and allowing teachers to focus heavily on individual students’ needs.

hard practice is targeted, simplified. This is the art of being a first-class focuser.

Geniuses and presidents strip meaningless choices from their day, so they can simplify their lives and think.

Inventors and entrepreneurs ask, How could we make thi...

Steve Jobs referred to simplicity as “the ultimate sophistication.”

ELON MUSK GREW UP in Pretoria, South Africa,

The young Elon preferred books to sports, and he was always making things.

By age 31 he was living in California and had sold two successful companies.

technology gets exponentially cheaper and more powerful over time.

Musk sought simplification.

That’s great, except the Falcon had already failed twice. So much for cost savings.

SpaceX head of talent Dolly Singh.

himself have to step into the public spotlight. In other words, he had to get people to believe.

brushed up on speaking skills and started talking big.

Pop star Lady Gaga gained unprecedented support for her music and mission to “foster a more accepting society”

President John F. Kennedy described the opportunity inherent in high-profile swings like these when he declared in September 1962 that the United States would put a man on the moon.

that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

Kosta Grammatis, one of the youngest avionics systems engineers in the company, sat tinkering with a tiny satellite for the year leading up to the third Falcon 1 launch.

K-SAT. It was basically a modem.

In 2010 only 2 billion of earth’s 7 billion people had Internet access.

“The Internet taught me nearly everything I know,” Grammatis

information access would be the fastest route to world peace.

With that grandiose mission, he launched AHumanRight.org,

Peace

“10x Thinking.” 10x Thinking is the art of the extremely big swing.

Think

Such a goal requires you to think radically different.

Astro Teller. Teller is the goatee-and-ponytailed head of a rather secret Google laboratory in California called Google[x].

Teller’s job is to dream big. 10x big.