Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

“railway and mining” Andrew Hargadon and Robert I. Sutton, “Technology Brokering and Innovation in a Product Development Firm,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1997): 716–49.

gambling techniques René Carmona et al., Numerical Methods in Finance: Bordeaux, June 2010, Springer Proceedings in Mathematics, vol. 12 (Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012); René Carmona et al., “An Introduction to Particle Methods with Financial Application,” in Numerical Methods in Finance, 3–49; Pierre Del Moral, Mean Field Simulation for Monte Carlo Integration (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2013); Roger Eckhardt, “Stan Ulam, John von Neumann, and the Monte Carlo Method,” Los Alamos Science, special issue (1987): 131–37.

in the shape of a hat Andrew Hargadon and Robert I. Sutton, “Technology Brokering and Innovation in a Product Development Firm,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1997): 716–49; Roger P. Brown, “Polymers in Sport and Leisure,” Rapra Review Reports 12, no. 3 (November 2, 2001); Melissa Larson, “From Bombers to Bikes,” Quality 37, no. 9 (1998): 30.

child-rearing techniques Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Pocket Books, 1946).

“evaluated as valuable” Ronald S. Burt, “Structural Holes and Good Ideas,” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 2 (2004): 349–99.

succeeded somewhere else In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Burt wrote: “Managers offered their best idea for improving the value of their function to the company. The two senior executives in the function evaluated each idea (stripped of personal identification). The summary evaluation of each idea turned out to be primarily predicted by the extent to which the person who articulated the idea had a network that reached across boundaries (structural holes) between network groups, functions, divisions in the company.”

pushed the right way For more on the concept of brokerage, please see Ronald S. Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); Ronald S. Burt, “The Contingent Value of Social Capital,” Administrative Science Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1997): 339–65; Ronald S. Burt, “The Network Structure of Social Capital,” in B. M. Staw and R. I. Sutton, Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 22 (New York: Elsevier Science JAI, 2000), 345–423; Ronald S. Burt, Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ronald S. Burt, “The Social Structure of Competition,” Explorations in Economic Sociology 65 (1993): 103; Lee Fleming, Santiago Mingo, and David Chen, “Collaborative Brokerage, Generative Creativity, and Creative Success,” Administrative Science Quarterly 52, no. 3 (2007): 443–75; Satu Parjanen, Vesa Harmaakorpi, and Tapani Frantsi, “Collective Creativity and Brokerage Functions in Heavily Cross-Disciplined Innovation Processes,” Interdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management 5, no. 1 (2010): 1–21; Thomas Heinze and Gerrit Bauer, “Characterizing Creative Scientists in Nano-S&T: Productivity, Multidisciplinarity, and Network Brokerage in a Longitudinal Perspective,” Scientometrics 70, no. 3 (2007): 811–30; Markus Baer, “The Strength-of-Weak-Ties Perspective on Creativity: A Comprehensive Examination and Extension,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95, no. 3 (2010): 592; Ajay Mehra, Martin Kilduff, and Daniel J. Brass, “The Social Networks of High and Low Self-Monitors: Implications for Workplace Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly 46, no. 1 (2001): 121–46.

plot’s central tensions I am indebted to the New York Public Library for making an early draft version of the West Side Story script available to me. This is an abridgment of that script, shortened for ease of representation.

communicated through dance This text is a combination of finished versions of the West Side Story script, Robbins’s notes, and interviews providing a description of the choreography from the first staging of the show and other sources.

“essential dramatic information” Larry Stempel, “The Musical Play Expands,” American Music (1992): 136–69.

the original Maria Fishko, “Real Life Drama Behind West Side Story.”

coffee cups and to-do lists The Frozen core team included Buck, Lee, Del Vecho, Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Paul Briggs, Jessica Julius, Tom MacDougall, Chris Montan, and, at times, others from various departments.

upstate New York In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, a spokeswoman for Walt Disney Animation Studios wrote that Lee “and her sister fought, as kids do; they grew together as they grew older. They were never estranged….In college, they became close. They lived together in NYC for a while, even.”

“ourselves on the screen” In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Millstein wrote: “Solutions to story issues [are often] connected to personal emotional experiences. We draw from our own stories, history and emotional lives as a wellspring of inspiration….We also draw on the experiences of others throughout the studio and deep research into specific areas that a film may attempt to explore. In the case of Frozen, we had a built-in research group at Disney Animation: employees who are sisters. They can describe firsthand what it’s like to have a sister as a sibling and the life experiences they’ve had. This is wonderful firsthand source material.”

“their experiences than other people” Gary Wolf, “Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing,” Wired, April 1996.

“pushed to use it sometimes” In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Catmull wrote: “It is too simple to say that people need to be pushed. Yes, they do, but they also need to be allowed to create, and we must make it safe for them to find something new. Andrew and I both need to be a force to make things move along, while at the same time, trying to keep fear from slowing them down or getting stuck. This is what makes the job so hard.”

make them stay put Art Fry, “The Post-it note: An Intrapreneurial Success,” SAM Advanced Management Journal 52, no. 3 (1987): 4.

from wine spills P. R. Cowley, “The Experience Curve and History of the Cellophane Business,” Long Range Planning 18, no. 6 (1985): 84–90.

middle of the night Lewis A. Barness, “History of Infant Feeding Practices,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 46, no. 1 (1987): 168–70; Donna A. Dowling, “Lessons from the Past: A Brief History of the Influence of Social, Economic, and Scientific Factors on Infant Feeding,” Newborn and Infant Nursing Reviews 5, no. 1 (2005): 2–9.

psychologist Gary Klein Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013).

of people’s expectations In an email sent in response to fact-checking questions, Bobby Lopez wrote: “From our perspective—we hit ‘send’ on an email with our mp3 attached, and then count the minutes, hours, or sometimes days before we hear back from them. Sometimes it means something and sometimes it doesn’t. We didn’t hear back right away, so we began to doubt the song, but when they did call us it was clear they were very excited.”

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