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Media Contact: Gretchen Crary, February Partners |212-255-2034 |gretchen@februarypartners.com

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, WIN!

HOW RANDOMNESS RULES, AND HOW TOMORROWS SMARTESTINNOVATORS CAN HARNESS IT

THE CLICK MOMENTSeizing Opportunity In An Unpredictable World

By Frans Johansson

On an Idaho potato farm, a young man who reads electronics books in his spare time tills rowafter row after row. He finds himself wondering if an electron beam could scan images in thesame linear pattern. Click. Philo Farnsworth cant shake this vision and invents thetechnology that will enable the television.

A hedge fund manager producing so-so results figures he has little to lose offering a number-crunching job to a fortysomething i-banking castaway. The new hire is poring over housing pricedata when a trend suddenly jumps out at him. Click. A few billion dollars later, John Paulsonand Paolo Pellegrini are the toast of Wall Street.

In Milan, 1983, an American employee of a coffee bean retailer wanders into an espresso bar.Hes never seen one before and is intrigued by the baristas laid-back artistry and the sense ofcommunity among the many customers. Not to mention, the coffee is delicious. Back outside, he

sees similar bars thriving on every street corner. Click. Howard Schultz returns to Seattleconvinced its time for Starbucks to change course.

These are click moments. These are the moments when circumstances no one would expect tobeget incredible ideas or massive success do exactly that.

These are the moments that shape business and culture around the world.

And until now theyve been dismissed as freakish, incomprehensible strokes of luck. In THECLICK MOMENT (Portfolio/Penguin;ISBN 9781591844938; on sale August 30, 2012; $26.95;Hardcover), Frans Johansson, the most perceptive young mind in contemporary

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CAPTURING THE CLICK

Click moments may defy logic, butthat doesnt mean you cant makethem happen. A few ways to getstarted:

oREJECT THE PREDICTABLEPLAN Randomness begets theadvantage of uniqueness.Actively rejecting the way you aresupposed to do things ensuresyou will set yourself apart.

oCREATE A COLLISION-PRONEENVIRONMENTWhen designingthe Pixar office, Steve Jobs made

sure there was a common atriumevery employee had to passthrough constantly every day.The results of this subtle nudgetowards collaboration are clear.

oMAKE PURPOSEFUL BETSLike Rock, Paper, Scissors, youcan never be sure your idea willbe a winning bet. But if you aresure you can afford the potentialloss of each, and have the passionto keep making them,randomness will favor you in theend.

oHARNESS COMPLEX FORCESUnintended consequences,unanticipated cascade effects,self-reinforcing loopsthere aremany forces swirling around usthey dont teach in businessschool. But by looking closely atsurprises, keeping our eyes openfor intense momentum, and beingready to double down on ourbets, we can make thesemysterious phenomena our allies.

entrepreneurship, dissects significant click moments throughout history to explain precisely howthey came aboutand how they can be reproduced.

Johanssons debut The Medici Effect was an international bestseller that shattered assumptionsabout how great ideas happen, made BusinessWeek and Amazons year-end best-of lists, andwas lauded by innovation legend Clayton Christensen as one of the most insightful books aboutmanaging innovation I have ever read.

THE CLICK MOMENT exceeds The Medici Effects promise many times over. Part intellectualthrill ride and part success blueprint that no one whose livelihood depends on big, disruptiveideas can afford to miss, this is the business publishing event of Fall 2012.

In its pages, Johansson proves that the simplistic narrative of success predictably resulting from arecipe of rare talent, careful strategizing and 10,000 hours of practice is hurtling towardsirrelevance. In todays entrepreneurial melee, the rules are changing so fast that formulas forsuccess are disintegrating, and multi million-dollar insights can strike anybody, anywhere, at anytime.

In short, randomness is taking over.

THE CLICK MOMENT is the first in-depth study of howrandomness, serendipity and, yes, luck are the new normal.More than that, it is a compendium of 100% actionableinformation for how smart entrepreneurs can set bait fortheir own click moments, notice them when they happen, andharness their vast potential immediately.

Johanssons analysis begins with exactly why the world is sounpredictable today, and why clinging to the notion thateverything has to make logical sense is a potentially fatalmistake for entrepreneurs. From there, he explores:

o The naturaland navehuman instinct to inventconnections to explain random coincidences. (Forexample, in case you were still wondering, Pink FloydsDark Side Of The Moonwas definitively notwritten to syncwith The Wizard of Oz.)

o Why consciously trying to follow the footsteps ofprevious successes is a denial of randomness, andtherefore a doomed strategy.

o The intricacies of Rock, Paper, Scissors and why it is aperfect reflection of how click moments happen. Despitethe extensive studies undertaken by the thousands of

annual competitors in the national RPS championship,the best strategy is accepting that there is no way topredict anything about what you should throw next.

o How taking your eye off the ballrejecting tunnel visionand always remaining open to inspiration from placesthat ostensibly have nothing to do with your businessincreases your chances of hitting one out of the park.

o Risk homeostasisthe psychological reality that if wedecrease risk in one area, we are driven to increase it in

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another. Johansson explains why risk homeostasis is the reason Apples Newton was acolossal failure while the Palm Pilot succeeded in the early 1990s.

If a good idea is a light bulb going off over someones head, a true click moment is a supernovaexploding at 100 billion degrees. Frans Johanssons THE CLICK MOMENT deciphers theseminiature miracles, showing that success is random but randomness is ours to control.

MORE FAMOUS CLICK MOMENTS

o In 1972, a New York socialite who dabbles in fashion design is thrilled to see Julie NixonEisenhower wearing one of her skirts on national TV. As she watches, she grows intrigued bythe casual, flowing wrap top Ms. Eisenhower has paired with the skirt and realizes theensemble could be combined into a dress. Click. Diane Von Furstenberg creates the firstwrap dress and achieves fashion immortality.

o A young filmmaker is working on a thriller movie he hopes will catapult him into the firstrank of directors. But when filming begins, his most complex and critical propon which hewas relying to shock and scare the audiencemalfunctions and cannot be fully repaired.Click. Steven Spielberg sees the terror will be more intense if he doesnt show the shark,

continues filming, andJawsbecomes the most successful movie of all time.

o The early versions of Windows are bug-infested failures, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer arebegging IBM for help, and a Microsoft engineer named Dave Weise is out of patience andready to quit. At a party with 500 in attendance, he runs into an old friend named MurraySargent who half-jokingly suggests a simple way to make Windows run much more smoothly.Click. They run to Weises office, boot up the software code, and soon Windows is theworlds dominant OS.

o A young woman who enjoys writing but is the first to admit she is no Jane Austen (and hasput her hobby on hold for six years to raise her children) wakes up haunted by a vivid dreamabout a girl passionately in love with a vampire who tries to resist a ravenous thirst for herblood. Click. Stephenie Meyer has the first ten pages of Twilightfinished by the end of the

day.

o For years, legendary track coach Bill Bowerman puzzled over how to make a spike-less sportsshoe, knowing it would revolutionize athletics. At breakfast one morning, he watches hiswife take a waffle off the iron. Click. He pours latex into the waffle iron, attaches thepattern to a shoe, and calls the CEO of Nike.

o A U.S. Senator takes the podium to give the keynote speech at the upcoming DemocraticNational Convention, reminding himself that a great performance on this national stage willensure his Senate re-election. Click. In a textbook example of the complex force known asthe cascade effect, Barack Obama is soon a contender for a much bigger office as a result ofthis speech.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frans Johansson is the bestselling author of The Medici Effect. Raised in Sweden by his African-American/Cherokee mother and Swedish father, he now speaks to audiences worldwide fromthe boardrooms of Americas largest corporations to villages in developing countries. He hasfounded a software startup, a healthcare firm, a hedge fund, and the strategy consulting firm,The Medici Group. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.