Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

“A serious assessment of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential,”

fast growt of technology

Working smarter and achieving more—without creating negative externalities.

Lateral thinking doesn’t replace hard work; it eliminates unnecessary cycles.

Researchers call this the psychology of “small wins.” Gamblers, on the other hand, would call it a “parlay,” which the dictionary defines as “a cumulative series of bets in which winnings accruing from each transaction are used as a stake for a further bet.”

“Once a small win has been accomplished,” Weick continues, “forces are set in motion that favor another small win.”

Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile achievers throughout history.

when the mentor is not just a teacher, but someone who’s traveled the road herself. “A master can help you accelerate things,”

those who train with successful people who’ve “been there” tend to achieve success faster.

In fact, one-on-one mentoring in which an organization formally matched people proved to be nearly as worthless as a person having not been mentored at all.

students and mentors came together on their own and formed personal relationships, the mentored did significantly better, as measured by future income, tenure, number of promotions, job satisfaction, work stress, and self-esteem.

There’s a big difference, in other words, between having a mentor guide our practice and having a mentor guide our journey.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”

doctors failed due to what they perceived as bad luck,

Bad luck is used when you try to feel as good as your self. any failure need to analyze cause and work better

They attributed failure in a way that made them feel as good as they could

about them...

The difference was how much the feedback caused a person to focus on himself rather than the task.

The research showed that experts—people who were masters at a trade—vastly preferred negative feedback to positive. It spurred the most improvement. That was because criticism is generally more actionable than compliments.

(1) it gives them rapid feedback; (2) it depersonalizes the feedback; and (3) it lowers the stakes and pressure, so students take risks that force them to improve.

3 steps: - rapid feedback - realize helpful -

For the first year,

goal is to get students used to anticipating n...

get them out of their own ...

building confidence and creating a “saf...

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Think different or change questiom

a programming language called Hopscotch for the iPad.

In an age of platforms, creative problem solving is more valuable than computational skill.

To be good citizens, responsible workers and providers, and ethical businesspeople, we need a minimum level of knowledge about the way the world works, who’s in it, and how things fit together.

Finnish education reflects that: it focuses on teaching students how to think, not what to think. That, says Wagner, is core to making school both interesting and valuable.

is better to know how to learn than to know.”

PLATFORMS can take the form of tools and technology

That’s from a combination of Sinatra-style credibility and premium educators, both of which make up Harvard’s platform.

Platforms teach us skills and allow us to focus on being great, rather than reinventing wheels or repeating ourselves.

me. “Somebody goes in and does that hard, ground level science based work. “And then on top of that,” he smiles, “you build the art.” Chapter 5 WAVES “Moore and Moore”

Luck is often talked about as “being in the right place at the right time.”

some people—and companies—are adept at placing themselves at the right place at the right time.

When two waves collide, one of two things can happen: they can cancel each other out or, if timed just right, they can combine and increase in intensity. This is called destructive and constructive interference.

“Intuition is the result of nonconscious pattern recognition,”

The 20% Doctrine) is

Read as ref

WHICH IS EASIER—MAKING FRIENDS with a thousand people one by one or making friends with someone who already has a thousand friends?

SOAR Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

“When money is available in near-limitless quantities, the victim sinks into a kind of inertia.”

Investors see momentum and future success as so highly correlated that they will take bigger bets on companies with fast-growing user bases even if the companies are bleeding money.

See momentum and how fast and.change direction capability

Brands. Versions. Specs. Upgrades. Pros

and cons. Features! Benefits! STRESS!

How could we make this product simpler? The answer transforms good to incredible.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

“The way of going about trying to make something new or better often tends to polarize into one of two styles,” Teller says. “One is the low-variance, no surprises version of improvement. The production model, if you will. You tend to get ‘10 percent,’ in order of magnitude, kind of improvements.” “In order to get really big improvements, you

usually have to start over in one or more ways. You have to break some of the basic assumptions and, of course, you can’t know ahead of time. It’s by definition counterintuitive.”

“Our belief is that if you can get people to let go of their fear, and to be more intellectually open, intellectually honest, more dispassionate

being creative, trying new things, and then being honest about what the results are instead of having all these other issues cloud their judgment, you can get to radically better solutions in honestly

the same amount of time, abo...