Shane Snow

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. 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.

Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down--and why some break through. The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In  Dream Teams , Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together. You'll    *   How ragtag teams--from soccer clubs to startups to gangs of pirates--beat the odds throughout history.    *   Why DaimlerChrysler flopped while the Wu-Tang Clan succeeded, and the surprising factor behind most failed mergers, marriages, and partnerships.    *   What the Wright Brothers' daily arguments can teach us about group problem solving.    *   Pioneering women in law enforcement, unlikely civil rights collaborators, and underdog armies that did the incredible together.    *   The team players behind great social movements in history, and the science of becoming open-minded. Provocative and entertaining,  Dream Teams  is a landmark work that will change the way we think about people, progress, and collaboration.