Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

Musk realized that in order to gain support for his big vision, he would himself have to step into the public spotlight. In other words, he had to get people to believe. So the geek brushed up on speaking skills and started talking big. This-is-the-future-of-mankind big. He did television appearances and magazine interviews. He told the world he was going to die on Mars. Musk isn’t the first in history to use over-the-top demonstration to create buzz, and therefore harnessable momentum. Pop star Lady Gaga gained unprecedented support for her music and mission to “foster a more accepting society” through the stir generated by her outrageous costumes and music videos. Being hoisted into the 2011 Grammy Awards inside a giant egg, then hatching on stage wasn’t eccentricism, it was brilliant marketing. Twenty-four million albums later, it’s clear such artistic brinkmanship worked. Energy-drink maker Red Bull spurred enormous word-of-mouth when it sent daredevil Felix Baumgartner to the edge of space in a balloon, then recorded his supersonic freefall. His skydive broke the record for first human body to break the speed of sound, and the highest freefall distance (127,852 feet). Creating your own wave and then catching it is as old as ancient Greece: Alexander III rallied the Macedonians with his hyperbolic quest to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea,” conquering the entire Persian Empire along the way. Of course, such spotlight-snatching only produces real mom...