Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

Nate didn’t care about why the Warp Pipes were there; he just sent his Mario straight to them. He raced through Level 1-1, then broke a hole in the ceiling on Level 1-2 and ran full speed on top of the level, until he found the secret chamber with Warp Pipes to Worlds 2, 3, and 4.

There is nothing extraordinary about using warp zones. Especially in 2007.

This is a book about Warp Pipes in real life.

Oh brother, so contrived. Not even applicable analogy here. It's like comparing a cyclist's speed to a runner's. Nothing innovative about cycling, but yes, you do move faster than a runner. I think he could've had a much better preface/introduction story; this isn't luring me in.

Sure, there’s been inflation since Rockefeller, but there’s no disputing that we’ve decreased the time it takes innovative people to achieve dreams, get rich, and make an impact on the world—and this has largely been due to technology and communication. “A serious assessment of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential,” writes the futurist and author Ray Kurzweil in his famous essay The Law of Accelerating Returns.

Is wealth in general being created much faster or are the gains just accumulating in smaller circles? Technology might be accelerating inequality much faster than boosting overall productivity.

I’ll debunk our common myths about mentorship and paying dues. And I’ll show why, paradoxically, it’s easier to build a huge business than a small one.

I hope he breaks the mold and analyzes counter examples that follow his rules but fail anyway. Looking only at successes can lead to incorrect conclusions.

The first thing you’ll notice is that no two presidents in this group had the same climb up the ladder. You may have also noticed that there are a lot of military men in this list. And governors, too.

Hasn't it long been noted that governorships is more conventional path to president? Not sure where he gets this congress being the path there. Don't congresspeople like not having term limits forcing a career change at some point?

They climbed various ladders of success and then switched to the presidential ladder.

What exactly is the "presidential ladder" then?

This lines up with the results of a 2011 study of 3,200 early-stage technology companies by Startup Compass. “For software companies with very high market risk,” explains researcher Bjoern Herrmann, “the uncertainty is so overwhelming that the experience that you have from a previous company doesn’t seem to have a significant impact on the actual success of a [second] company.”

Doesn't this exactly contradict his argument here, that successful past venture helps your next be successful as well?

“We ran out of money.” “People didn’t want it.” “The ‘gray hairs’ had no plan.” Look at what they did. They each attributed their companies’ failures to external factors. Things that made them feel better about themselves.

People didn't want it at least is not external. You keep with the wrong product then that's your error

Finland had left the States—and pretty much everyone else—in the dust.

Singapore? Wonder if their narrative fits this one?

But calculators don’t just help you with math. They do your math.

Except when they don't (e.g. you fat-finger). But if you rely on device, will you know how to sanity test your results?

Teaching in Finland became a prestigious profession where master’s degrees were required to teach on every level. And only 10 percent of applicants are even chosen to begin teacher training. Once they had jobs, teachers often stayed in the profession until they retired. (Roughly half of American teachers leave in the first five years.)

How to do this? Offer higher pay? Would we attract better teachers in US by simply raising the requirements? Reduce hours and keep pay the same? Seems like something else needs to accompany these changes to make class time ~2x more valuable.

m pretty sure that acquiring a billion dollars would solve all my problems. However, studies show that the wealthy—especially those who fall into it through inheritance or the lottery or sale of a business—are often not happier once they’re rich. A meaningful percentage of them believe that their wealth causes more problems than it solves.

Sounds rough. But I'd be willing to give pajama rich a try. Could be altruistic even, saving someone else from the same fate?

But data is clear that big cities are better places for creative people to create and inventors to invent.

Or that creative innovative people prefer cities?