The average person experiences 6,000 to 10,000 ads per day.
Many brands believe that a more and louder approach to communication will get the customers attention. However, this self-centred approach just contributes to the noise.
Any compelling brand doesn't just sell a product. They create a culture and engage a community that drives that culture. Their brand is a live experience that their consumers feel part of.

Sharing your brands message

Traditional models of marketing relied on a top-down approach. It starts with an external goal, and you direct your efforts at getting the goal to impact individuals. However, most consumer's have become desensitised to these efforts. The bottom-up business growth is built on the belief that a concept evolves into a culture and a community. The brand grows through participation. If done successfully, it creates a bold enough brand that will support business throughout evolution and changes in the industry.

The shift towards consumer-centered experiences

The world is accustomed to taking the top-down approach. It is usually fast, inexpensive and low-risk. But it is doesn't compel or elicit the consumer to action. To become emotionally invested and connected to our consumers, we need to change to an experience-based effort. However, it requires you to stand for something and invite people to become part of it.

Cutting through the noise

<ul><li>Shift from "me" to "we". Embrace becoming accessible to your community and consumers.</li><li>Lead with empathy. Don't entice.</li><li>Call people in to create belonging, so that people feel part of something bigger than themselves.</li><li>Instead of solving a problem, consider how to make people feel heard at every part of their journey.</li></ul>

Building a customer-centric business

There is a difference between the traditional top-down and the bottom-up business approaches. One creates unwanted noise; the other leads to a community of invested consumers.

Get a clear understanding of the differences between the top-down and bottom-up business approaches.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

business

Business

startup

Startups

How to Cultivate a Customer-Centric Approach to Brand Building

Today’s venture capitalists look more like bankers, and the entrepreneurs they fund look more like M.B.A.’s.The U.S. venture-capital industry is envied throughout the world as an engine of economic growth.

Modern Day Cowboys

Venture money plays an important role is in the next stage of the innovation life cycle—the period in a company’s life when it begins to commercialize its innovation. We estimate that more than 80% of the money invested by venture capitalists goes into building the infrastructure required to grow the business—in expense investments (manufacturing, marketing, and sales) and the balance sheet (providing fixed assets and working capital).

Venture Capital Fills a Void

The idea is to invest in a company’s balance sheet and infrastructure until it reaches a sufficient size and credibility so that it can be sold to a corporation or so that the institutional public-equity markets can step in and provide liquidity. In essence, the venture capitalist buys a stake in an entrepreneur’s idea, nurtures it for a short period of time, and then exits with the help of an investment banker.

Venture money is not long-term money.

It exists because of the structure and rules of capital markets. Someone with an idea or a new technology often has no other institution to turn to.Historically, a company could not access the public market without sales of about $15 million, assets of $10 million, and a reasonable profit history. To put this in perspective, less than 2% of the more than 5 million corporations in the United States have more than $10 million in revenues.

Venture capital’s niche

Venture capital fills the void between sources of funds for innovation (chiefly corporations, government bodies, and the entrepreneur’s friends and family) and traditional, lower-cost sources of capital available to ongoing concerns.Filling that void successfully requires the venture capital industry to provide a sufficient return on capital to attract private equity funds, attractive returns for its own participants, and sufficient upside potential to entrepreneurs to attract high-quality ideas that will generate high returns.

Venture Capital is the missing link

Investors in venture capital funds are typically very large institutions such as pension funds, financial firms, insurance companies, and university endowments—all of which put a small percentage of their total funds into high-risk investments. They expect a return of between 25% and 35% per year over the lifetime of the investment. Because these investments represent such a tiny part of the institutional investors’ portfolios, venture capitalists have a lot of latitude.

Sufficient Returns at Acceptable Risk

One myth is that venture capitalists invest in good people and good ideas. The reality is that they invest in good industries—that is, industries that are more competitively forgiving than the market as a whole. Now, more than 25% of disbursements are devoted to the Internet “space.” The apparent randomness of these shifts among technologies and industry segments is misleading; the targeted segment in each case was growing fast, and its capacity promised to be constrained in the next five years.

The Investment Profile.

More than 80% of the money invested by venture capitalists goes into the adolescent phase of a company’s life cycle. In this period of accelerated growth, the financials of both the eventual winners and losers look strikingly similar.Picking the wrong industry or betting on a technology risk in an unproven market segment is something VCs avoid.

Timing Is Everything

I am passionate about Investment and most importantly investing in businesses directly. Had a conversation with the VC Lab on the formation of my new Venture Capital firm and I needed to compare my fundraising strategy with what I can find on the internet, and that led me to this article by Harvard Business Review (One of my favourite places to go lol)

Before you can understand the industry, you must first separate myth from reality.

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

How Venture Capital Works

It’s possible to be a great manager and not a great leader, or vice versa. Rarely, individuals are both at the same time. The minute a process needs to be changed, either because of internal or external forces, the manager who lacks leadership ability often struggles to “rally the troops” to a new normal. Similarly, a great leader who has little managerial skills can pull a team in several directions with too much vision, creating a lot of noise but little in the way of results. It’s critical that great managers either learn leadership skills or align themselves with good leaders.

Myth: Management and Leadership are the Same Things

The title “manager” implies exactly this. The Oxford Dictionary defines “manage” as to “be in charge of (a company, establishment, or undertaking).” Surely that means, as a manager, you command and people jump? If only it were that simple. No matter the title, you don’t inspire people by pointing at something and saying, “Do that!” Rather, you bring them along by giving them a reason to “do that.” What sort of reason? It just needs to make sense; it needs to tie the work to some end objective.

Myth: Managers Can Make People Do Things

This myth may be a bit surprising. You’ve likely known or read about someone who seems to have the golden touch when it comes to management. The reason for such success is often misunderstood. Usually, it’s attributed to the manager’s ability to organize people, institute processes, and adapt as new information becomes available. There’s little doubt that these skills matter. But the other, less discussed aspect of a successful manager’s behavior is this: They hire and nurture the right people and get rid of those who don’t perform.

Myth: Good Managers Can Manage Anything

Harvard Business School Online Executive Director Patrick Mullane debunks three myths about management he's heard throughout his career.

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

3 Common Myths About Management | HBS Online

Product engineers are experts at identifying, understanding and solving problems. But the problems you tackle – and therefore the impact that you have – don’t have to be limited to the work you do within a text editor or integrated development environment.
Having an impact outside the code editor is about finding ways to shape your company’s culture as much as you build the product. That way, your positive impact will be felt far and wide.

Problem-solving outside the code editor

Encourage engineers to share their knowledge with others in ways that enrich the community. If they've solved a problem that others have struggled with, they should be able to share those solutions. These are great opportunities to build your own engineering culture, learn from other engineers, and foster innovation in the wider community. It’s important that engineers are given the support to feel comfortable doing this.

Being a brand ambassador

Getting involved in interviewing candidates is perhaps the most obvious and direct way a product engineer can help out with hiring. As your team grows, the two biggest challenges are ensuring the quality of candidates is high enough and that broader alignment is maintained. The interview process gives you a chance to gauge both quality and alignment or identify the risk of misalignment, so it is a crucial opportunity for any engineer to contribute to the long-term health of the engineering team.

Interviewing

Onboarding is often treated as a one or two-day interlude before we get to our “real” work. It’s focused on meeting a bunch of people, setting up our computer, walking through benefits, etc.
While these steps are important, this type of onboarding is generic and shallow and leaves huge gaps. When high-impact engineers invest in helping a new person become impactful themselves, it acts as a force multiplier and will pay dividends for the team and company.

Onboarding

The world’s best products are built by teams, not singularly brilliant and lone engineers. A defining characteristic of a product engineer is that they spend the time making sure that newer or more junior engineers that may be unfamiliar with the tech or processes not only understand what they are doing, but also why they are doing it.
In practice, this means a product engineer demonstrates technical leadership by creating processes that other people can follow, thereby enabling delegation and multiplying their effectiveness.

Knowledge sharing

A shared set of values that your whole team buys into will help maintain the elements of company culture you hold dear. Defining and iterating on values bottom-up as well as top-down means our values are something engineers have a sense of ownership of. In this way, they are not just empty words, but something we all have the opportunity to shape.

Defining values

High performing product engineers should look for opportunities beyond writing code to increase their impact and become a force multiplier.

computerscience

Computer Science

product

Product & Design

5 ways engineers can make a positive impact outside the code editor

Like investors, reporters crave proof that your story is worthy of their attention. If you’re solving the next big problem in fintech, martech, or fill-in-the-blank-tech, you need to pony up with the statistics that show why this problem needs your solution. You don’t need to invest all your money into market research to get this kind of data. Many times, it’s just a matter of looking at your pitch deck and selecting the stats that will stand out.

Data and stats are your allies

Founders who experience success in the media are often the ones who have a strong perspective on the market their business is competing in.While every founder undoubtedly has a company story they wish to share, it’s imperative to be able to address the bigger market picture.

Market point of view is critical

Every leader has a personal story in addition to the problem their company is solving. The savviest founders understand that showing their human side will help them be more relatable to others. Whether it’s highlighting lessons learned along the way, or a particular challenge overcome, showing vulnerability and connectedness can help persuade reporters that you have something important to share—beyond just the business case.

Don't be afraid to highlight the personal

It’s critical for founders to be able to explain their technology in simple terms. Sticking to easy-to-understand terminology and delivering focused messages can go a long way in attracting the attention of reporters. As tech becomes more complicated, reporters can’t possibly have an in-depth understanding of every product or service; it’s up to founders to make this information easily accessible and engaging.

Dial-up the simplicity

Make sure that your story is actually newsworthy and ties in with the current news cycle. By connecting your point of view to the stories that already have the public’s attention, your point of view will automatically become more relevant and interesting.

Refresh to the news cycle

Every founder likely dreams of being featured in global news publications. But the savviest companies know that this kind of coverage doesn’t happen overnight. It requires time to form relationships with reporters and build up to it.
They know that there are a variety of outlets and channels that provide important audiences for their story. By including smaller, target media outlets and leveraging platforms like blogs and LinkedIn, or self-publishing in Medium, companies can build momentum and credibility, which will help convince the bigger outlets that they are worth covering.

Look across multiple channels

communication

Communication

Ways to tell a good business story

Work often happens through informal structures, rather than through formal organizational structures. And so, collaboration cannot be understood by looking solely at these formal structures.Connectivity involves how your employees are connected through tasks, cross-functional projects, ad-hoc teams, goals, and different technologies across formal and informal channels. Connectivity is often taken for granted and poorly understood by leaders. Mapping out your organization's connectivity is the first step to understanding how work actually happens and is key to achieving organizational clarity.

Connectivity is the first driver of clarity

It involves ensuring that your employees understand and are able to track how their work contributes to broader company goals, as well as your company mission. This understanding is ever fleeting in organizations today. Your employees also need visibility into their work output and they should have the tools to measure this output over time. Technologies that meaningfully assess workload distribution are key for gaining visibility into work output. This type of visibility will enable you and your employees to pinpoint when task, project, and goal performance are veering off track.

Provide visibility

As we embark on new ways of work, it's no longer about executing the greatest volume of tasks--it's about doing the right tasks in the best possible way. Efficiency is enabled by both connectivity and visibility. Peak efficiency happens when employees are connected across different tasks, projects, and geographic and functional silos. And it is fueled by visibility. Visibility into how work happens enables you to build workflows and integrations that leverage automation and AI to empower more efficient work.

Encourage efficiency

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

teamwork

Teamwork

The Reason Your Organization Is Underperforming? A Lack of Clarity

Your mindset naturally constrains your ability to consider alternatives and possibilities that go beyond the boundaries of your thinking. Your limiting assumptions can be about personal skills, team knowledge, and abilities, organizational capabilities, market needs, technology, financial limitations, partnership possibilities, competition, or just about anything else. When it comes to strategy and innovation, success depends on how fast you become aware of your assumptions and then modify them. But it's a paradox: You can't see your most fundamental assumptions until you overcome them.

Your Hidden Assumptions

When it comes to developing your strategy or innovating, get clear on what you need to know and learn. <ul><li>List up to 4-5 topics. For example, the most successful social media influencers.</li><li>For each topic, create a list of guiding questions that, if answered, would really give you a solid understanding of the area. </li></ul>This exercise will help you better understand what's most important to further explore so you can broaden your perspective.

Identify Areas of Intrigue

Find a company completely outside of your industry or market and look at what makes them different and what they do really well. Then adapt their model to your cause. 
<ul>
<li>Use the format "I want to be the \___________ of ____________" by putting a company name into the first blank and the area of your target market or innovation area into the second blank. For example, if you want to transform the fashion industry, you might try "I want to be the Netflix of fashion"_. </li>
<li>Consider companies like Starbucks, Twitter, Domino's, NIKE, Home Depot, or any other innovative company.</li>
</ul>

Adapt a Business Model

Successful strategy and innovation are about how fast you can become aware of your assumptions.

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

creativity

Creativity

How to See Your Hidden Assumptions

‘There is nothing so practical as a good theory.’

A good theory will inform your ideas and help get them across effectively. In fact, a good theory will probably allow you to do without all the fancy rhetoric and illustrations, and just focus on getting right to the point.

Theory informs action

A theory is more than just a hunch or an untested idea. It is a set of ideas that explains the way things work. It’s generally based on evidence, either real or imagined, that is gathered together into a logical pattern.

Explains the way things work

It has applications in all aspects of life. If you are a good cook, rather than just following someone else’s recipes you can come up with your own recipes. If you are a good mechanic, rather than just following the manufacturer’s directions for fixing your car, you can design your own way to do it.

It is not some academic concept.

<ul><li>It answers questions for which there are no answers now —</li><li>it explores how something might be — and it suggests avenues to explore, experiments to run, predictions to make.</li></ul>

A good theory does two things

A theory is a hint, a possibility, an intimation. It’s an idea that someone thinks is worth exploring or one that somebody already holds dear.

Theory as a hint

A good way to develop a theory is to start by looking for things we can agree on. For example, we can agree that good products and services solve problems. To be useful to our users, they must fulfil a real need, and fill their lives with more joy, satisfaction, and value than other solutions would.

How to develop a theory 

“These are the assumptions that shape any organization’s behaviour, dictate its decisions about what to do and what not to do, and define what the organization considers meaningful results. These assumptions are about markets. They are about identifying customers and competitors, their values and behaviour. They are about technology and its dynamics, about a company’s strengths and weaknesses. These assumptions are about what a company gets paid for. They are what I call a company’s theory of the business.”

On a day-to-day basis, you might not be aware of it but you are constantly using the skills of critical thinking. Whether you are shopping for food, deciding on your career, or deciding what to write…

Nothing so practical as a good theory

Randomness, chance, and luck influence our lives and our work more than we realize. Because of hindsight bias and survivorship bias, in particular, we tend to forget the many who fail, remember the few who succeed, and then create reasons and patterns for their success even though it was largely random. Mild success can be explainable by skills and hard work, but wild success is usually attributable to variance and luck.

Fooled by Randomness: The Premise

Many systems we move and live works in linear fashion mean in sequential form, usually in one line, with every day of your work you move closer to your promotion, when you go to school you move closer to graduation, with every savings you do, you move closer to your retirement same lifestyle, and so on.Because of all these events we think that life is linear, or sequential, but that’s not the actual fact.

Life isn’t fair, Which Is Great

We need irrationality to make certain decisions.If we make every single of our decisions based on rational reasoning then we may not be able to survive or we will cease to exist. Not every decision or choice can be easy, some choices can be indifferent like there can be some choices whose outcome will neither make us feel better and will not be able to make us feel worse. If you want to invest money, by thinking rational like the market can go down or can go up, by thinking this way you won’t be able to make a proper decision, unless you are being slightly irrational.

We need Irrationality

Randomness is not all bad it’s harmless too, we people need to use randomness in a better way so that it can improve our lives in better way, there are some fields which can’t work without randomness such as art, poetry, humor, books etc., author says that without randomness there will be no beauty in art there will be no joy, happiness in these things, author says that in some situations randomness is good, author says that we can’t let randomness fool us, but the right kind of randomness is good.

Enjoy the Harmless Bad Randomness

Random irrational thinking can be harmful or harmless, and we must understand that harmless randomness and irrational behavior thinking will help us to make our lives better but irrational behavior attitude or randomness which is harmful will only destroy our lives. We must develop a stoic attitude and understand the difference between good and bad randomness.

The Stoic Attitude

<ul><li>As much as we want to “keep it simple, stupid” … It is precisely the simplification of issues that are actually very complex, which can be dangerous.</li><li>Mild success can be explainable by skills and labour. Wild success is attributable to variance.</li><li>Every man believes that he is quite different.</li></ul>

Stand Out Quotes

Randomness means there are some strategies that work well for any given cycle, but these cycles are often short to medium term successes. The strategies that work for a given cycle in the short term may not be the best for the long run. They are suboptimal strategies winning over a randomly beneficial short term cycle.The same can be said for setting big goals, following a fad diet, chasing an extreme training protocol, and so on. Unsustainable and suboptimal for the long term. Evolutionary traits that are undesirable can survive for a period of time in any given population.

The Real Meaning Of Randomness

It’s better to value old, distilled thoughts than “new thinking” because for an idea to last so long it must be good. That is, old ideas have had to stand the test of time. New ideas have not. Some new ideas will end up lasting, but most will not.

New Vs Old Ideas

The ratio of undistilled information to distilled is rising. Let’s call information that has never had to prove its truth more than once or twice, undistilled. And information that has been filtered through many years, counter arguments, and situations is distilled. You want more distilled information (concepts that stand the test of time and rigorous analysis) and less undistilled information (the news, reactionary opinions, and “cutting edge” research).

The Need For Curating Information

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American Essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst, whose work Focuses on Problems of randomness, probability and uncertainty. Fooled by Randomness deals with the fallibility of human knowledge, This book is one of the 75 smartest books of all time for its work on the way humans perceive randomness. The author has come up with various ways through which humans assign meaning to a series of independent random events.

About The Author

The World isn't what it seems. This book provides a glimpse of the hidden green code of the Matrix.

Contends that randomness and probability have a large impact on life, claims that people regularly fail to recognize that role, and tells how to differentiate between randomness in general and the financial markets in particular.

philosophy

Philosophy

books

Books

Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives. The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance. Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared. Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fooled by Randomness

Smartcuts (smart shortcuts) are tools to shorten the path to success. There are several basic categories of smartcuts. 
First, you can find ways to shorten the job, cutting out unnecessary steps, people and processes. Once you’ve abridged the task at hand, you can use your energy more efficiently and maximize your effort. Finally, use your momentum to soar, gaining momentum so that you never stop.

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate Success

College students play a game called ‘Bigger and Better’, where they start trading small objects(like a toothpick or a snack bar) and eventually trade up to bigger stuff like a stereo in their hands.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. 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.

Bigger And Better: Trading Up To Hack The Game

Waiting for a mentor is like waiting for a charming prince. Pursue your goal, and if you happen to find a good mentor, cool. If not, cool. 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 and eventually, he did find a mentor in George Carlin, and consciously studied and mimicked Carlin’s delivery. After he adopted this strategy he quickly rose to stardom.

Don’t Wait For A Mentor

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.

Feedback: Fail Fast, Fail Often

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 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.

Leveraging Platforms

First movers have a high failure rate. Early leaders do not. The first movers have to do all the heavy lifting, like getting the infrastructure set up. Early leaders can then come in and get a free ride. But sometimes the first wave is the best one, after all. Sometimes hard work isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to get in the water and know which wave to ride.

Waves: First Movers

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.

Superconnectors

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.

Constant Momentum

To innovate is to do something new. Disruptive innovation is when something new changes the game so completely as to eliminate all the established players. Disruptive innovations usually save either time or money. These technologies are simplifiers. They make things easier; they make things simpler.

Innovation

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, always wore black turtlenecks and one style of jeans so he didn’t have to waste time deciding what to wear. 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.

Simplification: Removing Decisions

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. The kind of smartcuts that drive Elon Musk’s success is called 10x Thinking — 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.

10x Thinking

These hacks help you face a situation that “everybody knows” how to solve

Think Outside The Box

The way to grow and move upwards.. faster.

Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (Wired, Fast Company, The New Yorker, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time. How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show 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? 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. These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical "smartcuts" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, 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. From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts 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.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow (Wired, Fast Company, The New Yorker, and cofounder of Contently) analyzes the lives of people and companies that do incredible things in implausibly short time.How do some startups go from zero to billions in mere months? How did Alexander the Great, YouTube tycoon Michelle Phan, and Tonight Show 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?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.These are not shortcuts, which produce often dubious short-term gains, but ethical "smartcuts" that eliminate unnecessary effort and yield sustainable momentum. In Smartcuts, 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.From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts 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.

Shane Snow is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Shane Snow has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Shane Snow's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Shane Snow

Smartcuts

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

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