Teil I: Kürzen

Kapitel 1: Die Leiter hacken

U.S. presidents are, on average, younger when they take office than U.S. senators are when they start their terms: the average age for presidents, senators and members of the House is 55, 62 and 57, respectively. This trend has held true since the founding of the country, and it is perplexing, as service in the legislature is commonly viewed as a stepping stone to presidential office. The job of president is more complex than that of a legislator (and harder to get), yet presidents are, on average, younger than legislators. It’s counterintuitive, to say the least.

When we analyze the career paths of American presidents, it becomes clear that they spend less time climbing the governmental career ladder than do their counterparts in the legislature. American presidents tend to have unique career paths. This pattern can also be seen with other highly successful people — rather than follow the prescribed strategies for success, they create their own paths to achievement. They aren’t ladder climbers; they’re ladder hackers.

At Brigham Young University, students play “Bigger or Better,” which is a kind of a scavenger hunt where participants go door to door trading everyday objects with those in the neighborhood. The point of the game is to trade up. Students start small, with toothpicks for example, and at the end of the night they have scored items like stereos and televisions. Snow leverages this example to explain that there’s an advantage to be gained in switching ladders, shifting skills and other resources to a different paradigm to gain profit. It’s a sort of existential arbitrage.

Many U.S. presidents started on one ladder, demonstrating their leadership skills in one arena, then switched ladders. Woodrow Wilson, for example, was a university president. Frank Sinatra said of New York, “If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.” And he had a point. People judge you by a different standard if you can succeed in the competitive jungle of New York. People also judge presidential candidates by a different standard; they judge them by their leadership skills.

Playing the game and paying your dues is really a trap that results in you getting stuck. This is a new day, and the old paradigms don’t work anymore. To succeed, we need to be more like Sinatra. We need to be college students continuously trading up, trading bigger and better. We need to jump sideways like cheetahs. We need to think like entrepreneurs. We need to hack the ladder.

Kapitel 2: Training mit Meistern

Some people, like comedian Louis C.K., pay their dues and struggle for years before they find success. Others, like singer Justin Bieber, catapult quickly to the top of their field. Snow parallels these experiences with the story of Homer’s Odyssee. When Odysseus went to war, he put his son in the care of his good friend Mentor, who was goddess Athena in disguise. Athena gave Odysseus’s son so much good advice that he became a hero. Just like Odysseus’s son, Bieber had good mentors.

In der Literatur gibt es unzählige Geschichten von Mentoren. Fiktion wird von Leuten wie Obi Wan Kenobi und Micky Goldmill bevölkert. Die Erzählungen von Mentoren finden beim Publikum Anklang, wahrscheinlich weil Mentoren ihren Schülern wirklich helfen. Die Menschen erkennen die Wahrheit in diesen Geschichten und fühlen sich von ihnen angezogen. Mentoring allein garantiert jedoch keinen Erfolg. Es muss mit viel harter Arbeit einhergehen.

But don’t wait for a mentor — it’s like waiting for prince charming. Pursue your goal, and if you happen to find a good mentor, cool. If not, cool. In that case, study the people who went before you. You can’t always get a mentor, but you can always learn from history. Jimmy Fallon’s manager was his personal mentor, but Fallon also looked for inspiration from comedians who came before him, even though he didn’t know them. Louis C.K. struggled for a long time. Eventually he did find a mentor in George Carlin, and consciously studied and mimicked Carlin’s delivery and style of humor. After he adopted this strategy he quickly rose to stardom.

Kapitel 3: Schnelles Feedback

Upworthy begann, als Gründer Eli Pariser bemerkte, dass im Internet Trash-Geschichten kursierten, aber wenig erbauliche Inhalte beliebt waren. Pariser wollte eine Website, die dazu beiträgt, dass positive Geschichten viral werden. Medienunternehmen brauchen lange, um ein Publikum aufzubauen, und Upworthy brauchte lange, um sich durchzusetzen.

Now we’re in New York, at a mock funeral for startups. Techies have decided that failure is cool.
Tatsächlich scheitern Menschen, die bei ihrem ersten Geschäft scheitern, wahrscheinlich auch beim nächsten. Wer erfolgreich ist, hat bessere Chancen, wieder erfolgreich zu sein.

We tend to blame failure on outside sources, which keeps us from learning from them. But we do learn from other people’s failures, and when we see someone else fail, we tend to blame them. We don’t want to be like them, so we learn from their mistake.

Feedback doesn’t usually work, because people are too self-conscious to take it to heart. And if feedback makes us self-conscious, it can make us perform worse. Nevertheless, negative feedback can be immensely helpful, if we can manage to focus on the task rather than on ourselves. It’s hard to be objective about ourselves and our performance, but that’s exactly what we must do — put egos aside and accept the feedback. To learn from negative feedback, you’ve got to get comfortable with failure.

Take, for example, students at Second City comedy school who analyze their performance so that they can learn from failure. Feedback should come immediately after performance, whenever possible, so every night after the show, the cast returns to the stage and practices new bits for any audience members who choose to stick around. It’s a casual performance, and the audience is solicited for suggestions on how to improve the gags. Second City’s process helps comedians get into the right headspace to do this.

Fallstudie: Upworthy hat ein berührendes Video über einen Jungen gepostet, der an Krebs gestorben ist. Sie haben im selben Video mit einer Vielzahl von Schlagzeilen gepostet. Einige der Schlagzeilen erwiesen sich als beliebter als andere. Nachdem sie mehr Daten bekamen, überarbeiteten sie die Schlagzeilen erneut. Schließlich fanden sie eine Überschrift, die die Klicks um beeindruckende 116% verbesserte. Dann fügten sie ein Miniaturbild hinzu, das die Klickrate um weitere 69% verbesserte, was einer Gesamtverbesserung von 186% entspricht. Die guten Leute bei Upworthy nutzten das Feedback, um eine Überschrift zu erstellen, die das Video so populär machte, dass es letztendlich 10 Millionen Menschen ansahen.

Teil II: Hebelwirkung

Kapitel 4: Plattformen

Straßen begannen oft als holprige Feldwege und verbesserten sich in Etappen. Schließlich werden sie gepflastert. Ebenso haben sich Computer schrittweise verbessert. Niemand muss mehr Binärcode verstehen, um einen Computer zu benutzen; Verbesserungen haben sie einfacher zu verwenden. Um es mit Isaac Newton zu paraphrasieren: Wenn technologische Verbesserungen auf früheren Verbesserungen beruhen, stehen sie auf den Schultern von Giganten.

Snow offers a different definition of “platforms” than you’ve likely seen elsewhere. According to his definition, a platform is something that’s part of the process of translating what the user types into code that the computer can understand, as well as the layers of improvement that each new iteration adds. Platforms are more about the interface of computer and user.

Famous scientist and mathematician Freeman Dyson doesn’t think schools should teach kids math; rather, schools should teach kids the tools they need to do math. Instead of memorizing multiplication tables, kids should learn to use calculators. It turns out that people actually do learn math faster with calculators; hands-on learning makes us want to learn. Similarly, platforms help us master the basics much quicker. What we all need is to learn to use platforms. Platforms can be tools like calculators. They can also be environments, like schools. More innovation happens in urban areas, because cities are platforms.

Chapter 5: Waves

Surfer warten auf die richtige Welle. Sie studieren das Meer und paddeln zu einem guten Ort. Manche Leute sind wirklich gut darin, das Wasser zu lesen; sie entwickeln einen Instinkt aus der Mustererkennung. Wir können auch gezielt nach Mustern suchen.

Pattern recognition will help you determine when to jump in and surf. Being first in a market is traditionally thought to give companies a first-mover advantage, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Sometimes the second or third wave in a set will have more power than the first. It is good to understand patterns and to watch the waves and figure out which one to ride.

First Mover haben eine hohe Ausfallrate. Frühe Führungskräfte nicht. Die First Mover müssen alle schweren Arbeiten erledigen, wie zum Beispiel die Einrichtung der Infrastruktur. Frühe Leiter können dann kommen und eine kostenlose Fahrt bekommen. Aber manchmal ist die erste Welle doch die beste.

Sonny Moore war in einer Band namens From First to Last. Sie wurden von ihrem Label fallen gelassen und trennten sich. Moore fing an, an seinem Computer herumzuspielen und elektronische Musik zu kreieren. Er hatte einen Freund, der DJ war, und die beiden begannen, Tanzpartys in LA-Lagerhäusern zu veranstalten. Elektronische Tanzmusik war ein neues Genre, das an Popularität explodierte. Die Technologie machte es dem Durchschnittsmenschen leichter, Musik zu machen, und das Internet erleichterte die Verbreitung dieser Musik.

Moore started releasing EDM tracks online for free, and one day a producer asked if he wanted to work with an up-and-coming singer named Lady Gaga. Gaga became famous, Moore’s star began to rise, he changed his name to Skillrex and the rest is history. It wasn’t luck that brought Moore to his achievements, it was his ability to read the waves.

Sometimes hard work isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to get in the water and know which wave to ride.

Kapitel 6: Superverbinder

Imagine you’re at a party where you don’t know anyone. If you’re outgoing, you might walk up to someone and start talking to them. If you’re an introvert, you might wait for someone to talk to you. Either of these tactics might lead to conversations with a couple of people. Now imagine you have a friend at the party who is outgoing and talkative. Your friend introduces you to everyone she thinks you should know, and you end up talking to 12 different people. Your friend has played the role of a superconnector.

Mass media acts as a superconnector in society. In Cuba, there were several attempts to take power out of the corrupt hands of the dictatorship and the mob, but the revolutionaries had trouble finding allies and gaining followers. The Batista regime succeeded in chasing the rebels, including one Fidel Castro, into the jungle highlands. Although the rebels managed to hold on to a tiny piece of land and conduct raids from there, the group was tiny and powerless compared to the might of the government. And there was no way for the revolution to spread, as most Cubans didn’t even know it was a thing.

Dann brachte jemand einen Amateurfunksender und es änderte alles. Die Bauern hatten Radios (und sonst wenig) und hörten den Revolutionären zu. Immer mehr von ihnen schlossen sich der Sache an. Die Unterstützung für die Rebellen wuchs, und am 1. Januar 1959 floh Batista aus dem Land und die Revolution war vorbei. Castro und seine Bauernrebellen hatten die Kontrolle über den Inselstaat.

Che Guevara started literacy courses for the people; he also taught farming and self-defense. Guevara understood that their radio station couldn’t just be a channel for revolutionary propaganda. He insisted that everything they broadcasted should be completely true. Because of this stance, the rebels gained the people’s trust. Whatever you might think about Castro — and no matter how bad Cuban-American relations might be — some of the lasting effects of the revolution still help the people to this day. The literacy rate, for example, is at 99.8%, which is higher than literacy in the United States.

Das Radio ist ein Superconnector.

Teil III: Aufsteigen

Chapter 7: Momentum

Wealthy people get depressed once they no longer have anything to work toward. Astronauts have this problem as well. So it turns out that people in dead-end jobs and really successful people have more in common than you might guess: they both get depressed because they feel they aren’t progressing or moving forward. People need to feel progress and feel they are moving forward. In fact, momentum is more important than quality or financials or most anything else. And sometimes the perception of momentum is as good as momentum itself.

In 2010, Paul Vasquez posted a funny video on YouTube, and it became a viral sensation. Vasquez was on fire. Around the same time, Michelle Phan posted a makeup tutorial video, which also became a viral hit. Phan’s tutorial became as popular as Vasquez’s comic video.

Vasquez continued to make videos, trying to capitalize on his early success. He sold t-shirts with the theme of his hit video. But he never again saw the success of that first video. Phan, on the other hand, has become wildly popular on YouTube. She’s one of the top producers of videos on the site and has contracts with makeup companies. Her star continues to rise.

Diese beiden Personen mit ähnlichen frühen Erfolgen hatten sehr unterschiedliche Ergebnisse.

Michelle Phan’s interest in art started when she was a teenager. She had a blog which featured her creative projects, and eventually she made it into art school. The video that would catapult her to fame was a tutorial on how to copy Lady Gaga’s makeup on her Bad Romance video. Phan analyzed how videos became hits and developed a strategy for success on the site. After her Gaga video, people looked at the other videos she’d created. She had enough of a backlog to keep people entertained, and she continued to post new ones to take advantage of the momentum. Her approach worked and she now has a successful YouTube channel.

Vasquez hingegen war ein One-Hit-Wonder mit einem banalen Backkatalog gewöhnlicher Heimfilme. Er hatte den Ruhm, der so plötzlich zu ihm kam, nie geplant. Er war von seinem anfänglichen Erfolg so überrascht wie jeder andere. Er hatte keine Strategie, wie er es verewigen könnte, außer ein paar T-Shirts zu verkaufen.

Wir haben hier einige wichtige Lektionen gelernt. Nehmen Sie Schwung auf, wenn es passiert. Schmiede das Eisen so lange es heiss ist. Bauen Sie Potenzial auf, damit Sie unerwartete Glücksfälle erleben können. Sie müssen auch Ihre Beiträge bezahlen, den Grundstein legen. Starte den Gelegenheitsmotor.

Kapitel 8: Einfachheit

Incubators are made for hospitals (big institutions with big budgets), and technological improvements make them more expensive with each iteration. They consume large amounts of electricity, because of which, most third-world hospitals can’t afford these lifesaving devices. Even those managing to acquire incubators can have trouble generating the electricity needed to run them.

Jane Chen wanted to do something about this. At first, she and her team considered making cheaper incubators, but they never could strip enough features to make a cheaper version work. They reconsidered the problem and realized that what a premature baby needs more than any other thing is warmth. An incubator’s other features, like life sign monitors, were nice to have, but they weren’t as important as keeping the baby warm.

With that insight, they went on to invent something akin to a preemie sleeping bag, which was insulated and came with a hot pad. The invention worked. It kept babies warm, it was easy to use and it required much less energy than an incubator. The outcome was that babies’ lives were saved and continue to be every day. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best ones. Bigger is not always better.

Innovation bedeutet, etwas Neues zu tun. Disruptive Innovation ist, wenn etwas Neues das Spiel so vollständig verändert, dass alle etablierten Spieler eliminiert werden. Disruptive Innovationen sparen meist Zeit oder Geld. Diese Technologien sind Vereinfachungen. Sie machen die Dinge einfacher; sie machen vieles einfacher.

Innovators have a talent for simplification, for zeroing in on what matters, and for focusing on the important challenges that they face. And innovative geniuses eliminate unimportant decisions from their lives. Steve Jobs, for example, stuck to black turtlenecks and one style of jeans so he didn’t have to waste time deciding what to wear. A study at the University of Minnesota showed that having to make multiple small and inconsequential decisions can sap a person’s subsequent self-control, and deplete patience and willpower. Clearing out the clutter of minor decisions can improve the quality of big decisions.

Sometimes the momentum to move forward keeps us on the wrong track. When this happens, simplification allows you to focus on what’s important. Constraints help creativity. If I ask you to say something funny, you’ll likely freeze and have trouble thinking of anything to say. On the other hand, if I ask you to specifically tell me a knock-knock joke, it’s much easier. Constraints make the task easier.

As Steve Jobs said, simplicity is “the ultimate sophistication.”

Kapitel 9: 10x Denken

Entrepreneur Elon Musk sold his first video game at age 12, and by 31, he had started and sold two companies. With time and money on his hands, he began to study space travel. He felt that, like most other technologies, it should get cheaper over time. But it did not. Only governments invested in space, and because it was so expensive, they didn’t invest in big-ticket outcomes, like sending people to Mars.

Musk, however, thought that sending people to Mars would be an important step in human development. So he did the unthinkable: he put a team of rocket scientists together and began working on the problem as a private enterprise, SpaceX. Because he wasn’t the government, he didn’t do things the government way, and he managed to find ways to cut costs significantly.

The kind of smartcuts that drive Musk’s success is called 10x Denken — the art of taking a big swing. To really make big improvements, you have to change things, sometimes drastically. And to do this, you have to let go of some assumptions. You can’t just look for improvement, which will get you just 10% better. You’re looking for 10x better.

Aiming high results in better performance, because people try harder. Also, when there’s just a few competitors, our performance improves compared to when there are none. When people know there’s lots of competition, they underperform; this is called the N-Effect. People like big swings. It’s part of who we are; the grand gesture captures our attention.

Elon Musk’s rockets kept crashing, but he kept trying. His third rocket, Falcon 1, was launched in August 2008, and like the two before it, it crashed. He rallied his supporters and convinced them that it was worthwhile to keep trying. He was right, and his next attempt on September 28, 2008 successfully launched into orbit. It flew perfectly.

After he’d successfully launched a rocket into space, it was easy for him to get funding. People, including investors, were excited, because Musk had done what no private party had ever done before: he had radically changed the playing field. He had made a 10x change. This captured people’s imagination much more than any incremental change ever could have.

Menschen, die solche großen Träume verwirklichen, sind Vorbilder für den Rest von uns. Sie lassen uns wissen, dass wir das Unglaubwürdige erreichen können.

Epilog

D’Wayne Edwards grew up in Joliet, Ill. He had a disadvantaged childhood. His mother was disabled and from her Social Security disability insurance, she raised six children.

Edwards was attracted to art. In middle school, he became enamored with sneakers and they became the focus of his drawing. He became such a good artist that by high school, he exceeded his art teacher’s abilities. The school encouraged him to make a lateral move to drafting class, which fostered discipline in his drawing.

He spent a lot of money on shoes and worked in fast food to pay for this addiction. After winning a design competition, Edwards became determined to become a shoe designer when he grew up. When he graduated high school, he couldn’t afford art school so went to community college instead. He got a temp job doing filing at LA Gear, where a suggestion box sat in the office. Edwards kept submitting design ideas to the suggestion box — ultimately, he got the boss’ attention and was offered a job designing shoes.

Sneakers were enjoying immense popularity among young men and boys at the time. Most of the people who designed sneakers didn’t know much about the young people who were buying their shoes, but Edwards did. He was one of those kids. His designs spoke to them in a way that other designers could not. Edwards rose in the field, moving from company to company in a variety of jobs. By the time he was 30 years old, he was one of eight people to design Air Jordan sneakers. He had achieved the pinnacle of his field.

He wished there were more African American shoe designers. To fill this gap, he founded a design academy. He got high rollers in the industry to fund scholarships for disadvantaged students and other populations that were underrepresented in the shoe business. He used his own experience to teach the students how to succeed. Edwards’ story exemplifies the smartcuts framework.

Um die in diesem Buch vorgestellten Ideen zusammenzufassen, folgt eine Liste der neun wichtigen Prinzipien:

Zusätzliche Ressourcen

Rezension zu Smartcuts von Brandon Redlinger

Interview mit dem Autor von Smartcuts von Harper Collins

Überprüfung von Smartcuts von Tech in Asien

Rezension zu Smartcuts von Los Angeles Times

Vorschau von Smartcuts von The Entrepreneurs Library

Smartcuts bei Amazon kaufen

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Actionable Books Kostenlos

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Brandon Redlinger Kostenlos

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Get Abstracts Freemium

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Get Nugget Kostenlos

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts nach Auswirkung Kostenlos

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Forbes Kostenlos

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Blinkist Freemium

Zusammenfassung der Smartcuts von Stanford Social Innovation Review Kostenlos

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