Serial entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow delves into the reasons why some people and organizations are able to achieve incredible things in implausibly short time frames, showing how each of us can use these "smartcuts" to rethink convention and accelerate success.

In every era, innovators from art to science to business have used what psychologists call "lateral thinking" to find better routes to stunning accomplishments. Smartcuts shows how they bucked the norm--and how the rest of us can too. Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how...