superconnector

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pages: 278 words: 70,416

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow

3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, attribution theory, augmented reality, barriers to entry, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, fail fast, Fellow of the Royal Society, Filter Bubble, Ford Model T, Google X / Alphabet X, hive mind, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, popular electronics, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, Steve Jobs, superconnector, vertical integration

But data is clear that big cities are better places for creative people to create and inventors to invent. * Superconnectors are a subset of the “Connectors” Malcolm Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point, people whose many acquaintances span social circles and who can facilitate in the spreading of ideas and epidemics. While Connectors are often passive links between groups, superconnectors actively use their networks to help individuals reach many people at once. For a bonus discussion on Gladwell and superconnectors, check out shanesnow.com/superconnectors. * Though we have to give Abrams credit for being a memorable storyteller, too

And although Fidel has turned out to be a less-giving ruler than a younger version of himself might have hoped, the octogenarian Castro’s approval rating in Cuba remains higher than the percentage of Americans who approve of their own Congress.* Che, true to his giving self, eventually headed off to Congo and Bolivia to teach them and join their freedom fights. In the end, Castro’s revolutionary message reached a massive audience through a superconnector—a radio—but the rebels won the people’s hearts because they showed that they sincerely cared. The movement harnessed the power of the superconnector by giving service as a publisher and educator. J. J. Abrams built his career by collaborating with talented, fast-rising, and well-connected people and by making them look great. And Mint grew business via its own broadcast on the Web, tapping superconnected people and then helping the members of those people’s networks through meaningful content.

., 117 success changing direction by cheetah behavior, 23–24 collaboration can lead to, 94, 118, 133–34, 138 combining work and lateral thinking, 13–14 differences in meaning, 8 first-mover advantage, 112–17 leadership quality as indicator, 28 mentoring as secret to, 37–40 money changes one’s view, 143–47, 229n145 overcoming impediments, 163–67 sideways thinking can lead to, 20–23 success breeds, 60–61 takes hard work, 11, 19, 20, 30, 50, 55, 97, 99, 121–22 takes more than luck, 14, 44, 46, 64–65, 106, 108, 199 vision and hard work leads to, 33–37 See also failure; hacking the ladder; ladder to success The Success Principles (Canfield), 38 sudden wealth, impact on success, 143–47, 229n145 Super Bowl XLVII, 147–50 superconnectors defined, 127n, 134 momentum from, 141–43 exemplifying the process, 197 superconnectors, examples Aaron Patzer, 135–36 BuzzFeed (blog), 142, 154 Ernesto “Che” Guevara, 126–31, 136–38 Fidel Castro, 123–31 Jack Canfield, 134 Jimmy Kimmel, 141, 229n141 J. J. Abrams, 131–33 Sonny Moore, 134 Super Mario Bros. (video game), 1–4, 14, 203nn1–2, 205n14 survival instincts/mechanisms, 7, 60–65 Taft, William Howard, 24–26 Taking Care of Business (film), 132 Tate, Ryan, 111 Taylor, Zachary, 24–25 teamwork, 41–43, 45 technology exponential nature of change, 4 first-mover advantage, 112–17 Moore’s law, 171 TechStars (startup mentors), 9 The Telegraph (newspaper), 144 Teller, Astro, 177–79, 185 Tellis, Gerard, 115 10X thinking about the meaning, 177–78 applied to education, 192–94, 198 can it really be “rocket science?


pages: 368 words: 96,825

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

3D printing, additive manufacturing, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Boston Dynamics, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, company town, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, Firefox, Galaxy Zoo, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, gravity well, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Jono Bacon, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, microbiome, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Narrative Science, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, optical character recognition, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, rolodex, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart grid, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, superconnector, Susan Wojcicki, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Turing test, urban renewal, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, web application, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Having a professional around is going to save you from chasing pie in the sky and help you focus on real ways to move the needle. Super-Connector (optional). Super-connectors are influential individuals who have access to a vast network of important people, money, and ideas. They usually have large followings themselves and thus know a lot about idea distribution and success. They can help brainstorm marketing strategies for the campaign, internally motivate and inspire the team, implement some of the more ambitious goals, lead behind-closed-door fund-raising efforts, and really build momentum during the campaign. If you know a super-connector or can figure out how to inspire one to help (typically by aligning your campaign goals with theirs), then you will have a huge advantage over campaigns that don’t have this access. 6.

Louis, The (Lindbergh), 244 Sprint, 45–46 Sprint Spark, 45 StackOverflow.com, 218 Stanford University, 117, 135, 222, 262 TSensors Summit at, 44 Stardust mission, 97 Stein, Lee, 253 Stewart, Jon, 95, 99 stone soup, 104–7 Strasbourg, France, 104, 107 Strategic Coach, 278 stretch goals, 187, 191 Student, 124, 125 Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), 100, 101, 115, 291n subgoals, 103–4, 112 subtractive manufacturing, 29 Summit, Scott, 34 Sun Microsystems, 240 supercomputers, x, 7, 56–57, 66 super-connectors, in crowdfunding campaigns, 194 super-credibility, line of, 96, 98–99, 98, 100, 101–2, 107 crowdfunding launches and, 190, 199, 203, 204 incentive competition launches and, 266, 272 Supermechanical, 177 surveys, 161, 209 synthetic biology, x, 22, 24, 41, 63–65, 66, 216 Systrom, Kevin, 15 Taylor, Alice, 37–39 technology, exponential, x–xi, xiii, xiv, 15–17, 21–22, 23–39, 41–67, 73, 79, 115, 116, 137, 146, 243, 274, 275, 277, 278 artificial intelligence as, 22, 24, 41, 52–59, 63, 66, 138–39, 146, 160, 162, 167, 216, 275, 276 deception phase in, 8, 8, 9, 10, 24, 25–26, 29, 30, 41, 60 digital camera as, 4–5, 6–7, 9, 10, 14, 76 disruptiveness of, see disruption, exponential Gartner Hype Cycle and, 25–26, 25, 26, 29 growth curve of, x, 6, 7, 9, 12, 12 indicators of entrepreneurial readiness in, 24, 26–29, 26, 31, 32–33, 57, 59, 60–61, 62, 64–65 infinite computing as, 21, 24, 41, 48–52, 66 intersection of multiple fields in, 61, 63, 65–66 Moore’s Law and, 6–7, 9, 12, 31, 64 networks and sensors as, x, 14, 21, 24, 41–48, 42, 45, 46, 66, 275 in putting linear companies out of business, 9–10, 15, 16, 17 robotics as, 22, 24, 35, 41, 59–62, 63, 66, 139 Six Ds of, 7–15, 8, 20–21, 25, 29; see also Six Ds of Exponentials synthetic biology as, 22, 24, 41, 63–65, 66, 216 3–D printing as, 22, 24, 28, 29–39, 41, 48, 66, 146, 216, 276 traditional industrial processes disrupted by, 17, 18–22 user-friendly interfaces and, 26–29, 30, 32–33, 59, 60–61, 65 technology manager, in crowdfunding campaigns, 193 TED conferences, xi, 54, 134 Teller, Astro, 80–84, 89, 93, 138 Teller, Edward, 80 Tesla, Nikola, 178, 196 Tesla Motors, 24, 111, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 127, 223 Tesla Museum campaign, 174, 178–79, 187, 192, 196 Tesla Science Center, 178, 192 testing-based insights, 160, 161 Thiel, Peter, 167 Threadless.com, 143–44, 161, 223 3–D printing, 22, 24, 28, 29–39, 41, 48, 61, 66, 146, 148, 199, 216, 276 birth of, 30 deceptive phase of, 30, 31 disruptive impact of, 33–35, 37, 38, 39 exponential entrepreneurship in, 35–39 toy industry impacted by, 38–39 user-friendly interfaces for, 32–33 3–D Systems, 30, 31–33, 34, 39 Thrun, Sebastian, 137 Time, 117, 139, 157 Tongal, 151–54, 156, 158, 166, 195 TopCoder, 152, 159, 160, 218, 226–28, 236, 240, 241, 254 Toronto, University of, 74 touch screens, 42 toy industry, 38–39 Toyota Camry, 32 traffic data, 43, 47 transportation industry, 20–21, 42–43, 62, 245 3–D printing’s impact on, 33, 34 trend surfing, 208 True Ventures, 62 T-shirt design competitions, 143–44, 161, 207, 223 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin E., 97 Turnstyle Solutions, 47 Tversky, Amos, 121 Twine, 177 Twitter, 11, 157, 173, 196, 202, 236 2001: A Space Odyssey, 52, 100 Uber, 20–21, 66, 174 Ubuntu, 186, 210 Unilever, 152 United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, 100 Unix, 27 upselling, in crowdfunding campaigns, 207, 208–9 USA Today, 154 user interfaces, 26–29, 30, 59 for 3–D printing, 32–33 in robotics, 60–61 in synthetic biology, 65 US Postal Service, 54 Utah Technology Council Hall of Fame, 133 uTest, 161 Vaz, Andrew, 160 Venter, J.


pages: 207 words: 63,071

My Start-Up Life: What A by Ben Casnocha, Marc Benioff

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Bonfire of the Vanities, business process, call centre, coherent worldview, creative destruction, David Brooks, David Sedaris, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, fear of failure, hiring and firing, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, Menlo Park, open immigration, Paul Graham, place-making, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, superconnector, technology bubble, traffic fines, Tyler Cowen, Year of Magical Thinking

If you want to take your network to the next level, you need to truly enjoy relationshipbuilding. It can’t just be for the ends. You must love the means. • The “what you know” is important. The cliché “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is true, to an extent. But as Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf, told me once, the what you know is important, too. Super-connectors become perceived “experts” in something. For example, I know some things about business and some things about education and young people. I’m an expert in neither, but to my business friends I’m their expert on youth issues and to my school friends I’m their expert on business. Knowing a little about a lot of topics can produce a powerful expert effect that makes you indispensable to your network.


pages: 230 words: 76,655

Choose Yourself! by James Altucher

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, cashless society, cognitive bias, dark matter, digital rights, do what you love, Elon Musk, estate planning, John Bogle, junk bonds, Mark Zuckerberg, mirror neurons, money market fund, Network effects, new economy, PageRank, passive income, pattern recognition, payday loans, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, sharing economy, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, software as a service, Steve Jobs, superconnector, Uber for X, Vanguard fund, Virgin Galactic, Y2K, Zipcar

This means you have to get good at coming up with ideas. Finding a meaningful connection between you and the other person. A connection that person might value. Lewis Howes contacted many former athletes. Sometimes people use their hometowns or schools. Sometimes people use mutual friends, etc. * * * Eight Skills You Need to Become a Super-Connector 1. Introduce two other connectors. If you can introduce two people who are themselves great connectors, then you become a meta-connector. They will meet and get along, since connectors get along with one another for two reasons: they are naturally friendly people (hence their ability to connect so easily with people) and they have a lot of friends in common almost by definition.


pages: 397 words: 110,130

Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thompson

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Andy Carvin, augmented reality, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Benjamin Mako Hill, butterfly effect, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, compensation consultant, conceptual framework, context collapse, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, Deng Xiaoping, digital rights, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, drone strike, Edward Glaeser, Edward Thorp, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, Filter Bubble, folksonomy, Freestyle chess, Galaxy Zoo, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Henri Poincaré, hindsight bias, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, Ian Bogost, information retrieval, iterative process, James Bridle, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, language acquisition, lifelogging, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Netflix Prize, Nicholas Carr, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, patent troll, pattern recognition, pre–internet, public intellectual, Richard Feynman, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Socratic dialogue, spaced repetition, superconnector, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Two Sigma, Vannevar Bush, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, X Prize, éminence grise

They brokered information that the rest of us were simply too lazy, busy, or constitutionally unsuited to leverage. We had limits on our sociality. Today’s ambient tools dissolve those limits. They make it far easier for us to keep tabs on weak ties and to make more of them. This phenomenon transforms everyday people into superconnectors, in everyday lightweight contact with far more people than before. The explosion of weak ties is how I and my wife found our house. It was how an acquaintance was able to notice—at the corner of her attention—what had happened to Mona Eltahawy and how Suarez’s colleagues are able to find answers so quickly at work.


pages: 935 words: 197,338

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 90 percent rule, Adam Neumann (WeWork), adjacent possible, Airbnb, Apple II, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Bob Noyce, book value, business process, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Didi Chuxing, digital map, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dutch auction, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, family office, financial engineering, future of work, game design, George Gilder, Greyball, guns versus butter model, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Masayoshi Son, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, microdosing, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, mortgage debt, move fast and break things, Network effects, oil shock, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, plutocrats, power law, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, super pumped, superconnector, survivorship bias, tech worker, Teledyne, the long tail, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban decay, UUNET, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Vision Fund, wealth creators, WeWork, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Zenefits

Next, money flowed in, the tally of venture capitalists shot up, and startups multiplied both in numbers and in ambition: this was analogous to China around 2010. Finally, as competition among startups became hectic and costly, the Valley’s venture capitalists performed a coordinating function. They brokered takeovers, encouraged mergers, and steered entrepreneurs into areas that were not already swamped; as the super-connectors in the network, they shaped a decentralized production system. This was the final threshold that China had to cross. By 2015, it would have done so. China’s progress from phase two to phase three was crystallized in the story of Wang Xing, the founder of a stupendously successful Chinese food-delivery empire named Meituan.


Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy

active measures, air freight, airport security, bread and circuses, centre right, clean water, computer age, Exxon Valdez, false flag, flag carrier, Live Aid, old-boy network, operational security, plutocrats, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent control, rolodex, superconnector, systems thinking, urban sprawl

They had the world's most powerful supercomputers to do the real work. These were located in the basement of the sprawling NSA headquarters building, a dungeon like area whose roof was held up with naked steel I-beams because it had been excavated for just this purpose. The star machine there was one made by a company gone bankrupt, the Super-Connector from Thinking Machines, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The machine, custom-built for NSA, had sat largely unused for six years, because nobody had come up with a way to program it efficiently, but the advent of quantum theory had changed that, too, and the monster machine was now cranking merrily away while its operators wondered who they could find to make the next generation of this complex machine.