<p>Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (<em>Wired</em>, <em>Fast Company</em>, <em>The New Yorker</em>, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time.</p><p>How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and <em>Tonight Show</em> host Jimmy Fallon climb to the top in less time than it takes most of us to get a promotion? What do high-growth businesses, world-class heart surgeons, and underdog marketers do in common to beat the norm?</p><p>One way or another, they do it like computer hackers. They employ what psychologists call "lateral thinking: to rethink convention and break "rules" that aren't rules.</p><p>These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical "smartcuts" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In <em>Smartcuts</em>, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.</p><p>From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, <em>Smartcuts</em> is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter—and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.</p>