Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Adam Grant titled his book: Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, but that’s not exactly right. Here’s how he describes what it means to be original in this book. “Originality itself starts with creativity: generating a concept that is both novel and useful. But it doesn’t stop there. Originals are people who take the initiative to make their visions a reality.” The good news is that originality is not a fixed trait. Like many other things in life, you can develop your skills and get better over time. That’s what Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World is about. If you’re interested in being more original, or in making a contribution to the world, or in having a more satisfying life, this book will help you. The core of Originals is made up of eight chapters. Creative Destruction: The Risky Business of Going Against the Grain Blind Inventors and One-Eyed Investors: The Art and Science of Recognizing Original Ideas Out On a Limb: Speaking the Truth to Power Fools Rush In: Timing, Strategic Procrastination, and The First Mover Disadvantage Goldilocks and The Trojan Horse: Creating and Maintaining Coalitions Rebel With a Cause: How Siblings, Parents, and Mentors Nurture Originality Rethinking Groupthink: The Myths of Strong Cultures, Cults, and Devil’s Advocates Rocking The Boat and Keeping It Steady: Managing Anxiety, Apathy, Ambivalence, and Anger There’s also a section called “Actions for Impact.” It’s an excellent overview of the material in the book with good advice on how to put what you’ve read about into practice. Brand New Insights I identified two kinds of insights in the book. The first were, if you’ll pardon the expression, “Original.” Here are a few. I learned that a sense of security in one realm of life makes us able to take risks in another realm of life. Those risk-taking entrepreneurs aren’t risk-takers all the time. Instead, they and we maintain a kind of risk portfolio. That made perfect sense when I read it, but I’d never thought of things that way before. I found many insights in this book about judging and presenting ideas. I’ve spent most of my adult life as a writer and speaker, but the book produced several “aha!” moments. There are lots of insights on parenting. They’re the sort of thing I wish I had known decades ago. Now I plan to pass them on to my children who have children of their own. If you’re in business and looking for the people who can make your business go and grow there’s lots of good advice for you. Read about the hiring blueprints (professional, star, and commitment) and how they work (or don’t) in different situations. Insights that Deepened Understanding There are also lots of insights here that deepened my understanding. Grant describes things that match my experience, but by describing them and analyzing them, he added the “why” to make my experience and understanding richer. Here’s one example in a quote from the book. “Research demonstrates that it is the most creative children who are the least likely to become the teacher’s pet.” That was me. I was the kid that was always coming up with a new idea about how to do things, and I most definitely was not my teachers’ pets. After reading Originals I understood the situation better than before. Here’s another example. I’ve known for years that it wasn’t necessarily an advantage to be the first mover in an industry. What Grant added for me was some of the reasons why. A Small Quibble I only have a quibble with one part of the book, and it truly is a quibble, not a major issue. Grant describes how some originals procrastinate creatively. My quibble is that I don’t call what he describes “procrastination.” For me, “procrastination” is delaying something you should be doing right now. What Grant describes is a way of working. Here’s the quote where I pick my nit. "When we bemoan the lack of originality in the world, we blame it on the absence of creativity. If only people could generate more novel ideas, we’d all be better off. But in reality, the biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation— it’s idea selection." Actually, my experience and research say that often the problem occurs between idea generation and idea selection. People generate novel ideas all the time. What sets originals apart is that they’re good at capturing the ideas that they get. Ideas are like butterflies on the wind. If you don’t capture them, they’re gone in an instant. You have to capture ideas so you have a big pile of ideas to play with. The more you have the more likely you are to have an excellent idea and you increase the number of possible connections between ideas. When I start working on a project, I start capturing ideas as I get them, using my trusty voice recorder. The ideas wind up in a file in no particular order. Over time, the file grows and I start seeing some connections. When I’m ready to start concentrated work I have a lot of stuff that I can use. Often, I put the key ideas on index cards and move them around until they start to make sense. Or I write a “zero draft” to get more ideas and find out where I need research or clarification. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. I can’t see how to turn the ideas into writing. Then I consign them to my writing compost file. See my post, “Post or Compost” to see how that works. One More Thing There’s one more thing you should know. This book is a delight to read. The stories are mostly original and well-told. By original, I mean that they’re not the stories you see in just about every other business or self-help book. In addition, they’re supported by solid research, and many times the story that’s being told is the story of the research itself. This review appeared first on my Three Star Leadership blog.

In Originals, Adam Grant coalesces the fluidity of an experienced storyteller with the robustness of an academic research paper to craft an instructional manual for original thinkers. Creative chapter titles with action-focused subtitles highlight key concepts that the reader can collect throughout the book. For example, the chapter title “Goldilocks and the Trojan Horse” and subtitle “Creating and Maintaining Coalitions” preview Grant’s advice that originals who wish to create and maintain coalitions with others should moderate their radicalism (as would Goldilocks), enter established environments under the guise of moderation (concealing their true intentions like the Trojan Horse), and then gradually unleash their radical ideas from within the organization. Grant supports his unique perspectives with social science research from unusual environments. For example, Grant illustrates that intuition only aids in domains in which one is experienced by quoting Erik Dane’s study that experienced handbag owners were 22% more accurate at identifying real handbags in shorter time periods than in longer time periods. Grant illustrates his points using examples from creators such as Salzburg’s Mozart, companies such as America’s Warby Parker, activists such as Serbia’s Srđa Popović, and world institutions such as the Nobel Prize, indicating that his insights have widespread relevance. Originals’ valuable outline of contrarian success principles culminates in a 10-page section following the text entitled “Actions for Impact,” which provides 30 action steps categorized by use for individuals, leaders, parents, and teachers. Throughout Originals, Grant elucidates upon the processes and implementation behind individual innovative thinking while suggesting actions to promote an innovation-rich environment. His comments often reveal limitations of conventional thinking and justifications for his suggested actions. For example, Grant indicates that his failure to recognize the value of Warby Parker was a false negative (a false expectation of product failure when the product actually succeeds), leading him to recommend immense idea generation, seeking feedback from one’s peers, and industry research as action steps due to the broad perspective gained from these activities. Novel ideas discussed by Grant in this book include seeking quantity of insights over quality, challenging the status quo, collaboration as key to innovation, seeking security while waiting for the right time to implement an original idea, and remaining open-minded. Indeed, Originals provides a broad yet tactical guideline for success. Originals is not without its shortcomings. Most of Grant’s examples concern business and politics, limiting most of the book’s value to professionals in those domains. Similarly, Originals (like many of today’s popular business books) mainly focuses on American businesses while most of its few non-American examples highlight Europeans in the past 200 years, which eschews numerous centuries of rich examples from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and South America. In numerous chapters, Grant immerses the reader so deeply into anecdotes that he dilutes the impact of the chapter’s main point. Grant’s inconsistent use of graphics and tables throughout the book reduces the clarity of chapters without such supplemental aids. Grant largely supports his points with social science research, which often lack the validity of more rigorous natural science research. The book includes footnotes but lacks a list of supplementary literature for further reading. However, the depth of this book outweighs these downsides. Grant upends the reader’s traditional paradigms concerning “success” through his accessible and convincing writing. Originals is a highly recommended read for any individual who wishes to internalize and apply innovative thinking principles in any area of life.

Oh man, this book was awesome. I don’t remember why I ended up buying it - it was probably looking through the books I’d picked up and seeing amazon’s similar suggestions. This is yet another book that quotes and references Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, so clearly I’m on a theme. Anyway, I actually almost didn’t read it (or at least I almost deferred it longer) because I was thinking it’d be more of a dry case study with specific examples. “Oh, Steve Jobs ate only fruit and stunk like feet but he invented the iPhone, so you know, options!” or whatever, and I was less interested in that kind of a book. Fortunately, it wasn’t. This book is equal parts deep history lessons and self-help. The whole concept is around original thinkers and how they see the world, adapt to it, and change it. There’s a huge amount of history on the women’s suffrage movement in the US, detailing the break between Lucy Stone and Susan B Anthony/Elizabeth Cady Stanton over their differing goals and alliances (should women’s suffrage be the sole goal in and of itself? What about partnering with the temperance movement to get women to be able to vote for prohibition? Should we partner with abolitionists? Should we talk about everyone being able to vote or just women? What if we differentiated ourselves from abolitionists by having rallies with outright racists? etc), and also a lot of information on people’s reactions to the Holocaust - specifically with insight and research into why, say, given two people living on the same street with similar jobs and backgrounds, one of them might help Jews to escape, and another might not bother. What could’ve driven those decisions? It all ties back into ways of thinking and looking at the world - ways to propose change in organizations, how to message to make progress, how to stick with a goal or gain traction in it, different ways to reframe interactions and on and on. I’m already trying out a few of the techniques he outlines in dealing with one of my kids (and initial results are encouraging, but of course 2-3 interactions do not a trend make). Super highly recommended.

It took me a while to get around to Adam Grant's first book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success , but it turned out to be life-changing. Now I tell everyone about it and even host a monthly free favor exchange event based on its principles. So I was stoked to get my hands on "Originals." Besides being an enjoyable read, full of insider case studies of true revolutionaries, it's also a life-affirming book for all the creative folks out there who think they're just not good enough to go big. For example, Grant makes the case for the upside of procrastination. Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci didn't get his big break till his mid-40s and was a world-class procrastinator, tinkering with the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper for over 15 years? Or that Martin Luther King Jr didn't write his "I have a dream" speech until the night before, and then winged its most memorable parts? All these stories make the business of originality not the domain of the chosen, but something more human and approachable. Steve Wozniak had to be pried away from his job at HP with a crowbar to co-found Apple. Larry Page and Sergey Brin head the highest-valued company in the world because they failed at selling Google for $2M early on. These were not prescient demigods but people who made good and bad decisions just like us. Grant is a master at telling these stories of Promethean feats, sound judgment and serendipity, extracting from them the essence that we can apply to our own lives. One example: when starting a new venture, hedging your bets with a real job actually works better than dropping everything and going full cowboy. One dissonant note about the book was that although it ostensibly talks about non-conformists, its case studies mostly cover conformists who deviated from the norm by a little, but otherwise followed conventional paths and then got stupendously lucky. For example, "Seinfeld", for all its originality, followed the hoary 22-min TV sitcom format, and once it caught on, leaned on the same characters and formulas for years. (I would nominate "Key & Peele" as a much better study in non-conformity.) The Google guys went to grad school, raised venture capital, and had no revenue model for years -- a story told in Silicon Valley a thousand times. To succeed, your idea has to be discrepant enough to be perceived as original, but not so discrepant as to weird people out -- and then you have to get lucky. Nonconformists only change the world when the world is ready for them, or when they have a devoted and powerful champion. Otherwise, the story of most true non-conformists is one of failure. Those unsung geniuses either never show up in books at all, or are only heard about after death (e.g. Vincent van Gogh). Grant meticulously presents hundreds of results from the scientific literature to illuminate the narrative. I particularly enjoyed the immediately usable counterintuitive tidbits peppering whole book (eg starting a pitch with "why you shouldn't invest in us"). For entrepreneurs, creative folks of all stripe, and those interested in fomenting revolution, this is an essential handbook for applying your gifts to the world. -- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil, author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible , the #1-rated dating book on Amazon

This book has given me a bold curiosity to analyze and challenge shortcomings of already established practices. Grant gives you an excellent framework to understand how you approach novel concepts that can become original whilst also providing guidance for leaders to develop a culture where original ideas thrive. Excellent read, you won’t be disappointed by this book.

The book is premised on the fact that anybody ("original" people) can achieve great success in many different ways. Many if not all of these ways deal with the breaking of convention. My problem is that technically if you employ these techniques you resultantly wouldn't be "original" anymore. The title and the subtitle (How Non-Conformists Move The World) seem to be somewhat of a paradox unless you take original to mean not conventional (as some people do). The semantic difficulties of the concept induce befuddlement. Regarding information presented, there seems to be an inherent lack of structure as well. Even though all the chapters did reinforce the premise, the lack of flow made each chapter seem like just a piece of one large amalgamation of lessons and stories. Regardless, each chapter had a few interesting parables that were presented with equally interesting research. Many people achieve great success with what seems to be minimal effort. This goes to show that effort is not a prerequisite of success. Instead how you go about making the effort or handling situations correlate more with your success. In the text you will be introduced (or reintroduced) to a lot of these methods. That being said, the skills you can employ in this book are practical for the average person (maybe that's why it was called originals). It wasn't the best book, but it was nevertheless a good read. 3.4/5

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant “Originals" is an entertaining social-science book on how we can become more original. Referencing research and many studies, best-selling author Adam Grant explores what it takes to be creative and champion new ideas. This enlightening 335-page book includes the following eight chapters: 1. Creative Destruction, 2. Blind Inventors and One-Eyed Investors, 3. Out on a Limb, 4. Fools Rush In, 5. Goldilocks and the Trojan Horse, 6. Rebel with a Cause, 7. Rethinking Groupthink, and 8. Rocking the Boat and Keeping It Steady. Positives: 1. A well-researched, well-written book. It’s entertaining and fun to read. 2. Interesting topic, the social science of originality. 3. Very good format. Each chapter beings with a chapter-appropriate quote and it’s broken out by subtopics. Grant also does a good job of introducing the main goal for each chapter. 4. Does a good job of defining originality and staying on topic. “By my definition, originality involves introducing and advancing an idea that’s relatively unusual within a particular domain, and that has the potential to improve it.” 5. In many respects this narrative resembles books from the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel H. Pink and that’s not a bad thing. 6. The faults in defaults. “To get Firefox or Chrome, you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting the default, you take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better. And that act of initiative, however tiny, is a window into what you do at work.” “The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists.” 7. The odds are you will learn something that can be applied to your everyday life. “Regardless of political ideologies, when a candidate seemed destined to win, people liked him more. When his odds dropped, they liked him less.” 8. Interesting tidbits of knowledge throughout the book. “The word entrepreneur, as it was coined by economist Richard Cantillon, literally means ‘bearer of risk.’” 9. Debunks some myths or preconceptions that I carried. “Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit.” “Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.” 10. The barriers of originality. “The biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection.” 11. The book is loaded with examples and interesting characters. The story of the great inventor Dean Kamen is a highlight. “When it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality.” 12. The limitations of originality. “Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience.” 13. An interesting and practical chapter on when to speak up and how to do it effectively. “Power involves exercising control or authority over others; status is being respected and admired.” 14. An interesting look at procrastination. Pioneers vs settlers. “Power involves exercising control or authority over others; status is being respected and admired.” 15. How to overcome barriers that prevent coalitions from succeeding. “To form alliances with opposing groups, it’s best to temper the cause, cooling it as much as possible. Yet to draw allies into joining the cause itself, what’s needed is a moderately tempered message that is neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.” 16. Interesting look at the impact of birth order as it relates to originality. “Laterborns were twice as likely as firstborns to support radical changes.” “The evidence on birth order highlights the importance of giving children freedom to be original.” 17. Observations to live by. “In general, we tend to be overconfident about our own invulnerability to harm.” 18. Some lessons on groupthink. “The evidence suggests that social bonds don’t drive groupthink; the culprits are overconfidence and reputational concerns.” “Bridgewater has prevented groupthink by inviting dissenting opinions from every employee in the company.” 19. The positive power of negative thinking. “Most people assume it’s better to be a strategic optimist than a defensive pessimist. Yet Norem finds that although defensive pessimists are more anxious and less confident in analytical, verbal, and creative tasks, they perform just as well as strategic optimists.” 20. A practical overview. “Actions for Impact” Negatives: 1. Social science is not a hard science. Though fun, entertaining and even enlightening we engineers are skeptical of it. 2. Limited use of charts and diagrams to complement the excellent narrative. 3. Lack of supplementary materials. I would have added an appendix explaining methodology used to come up with conclusions. 4. References included but no direct links to access them in the body of the narrative thus eliminating one of the great advantages of eBooks. In summary, this was a fun book to read. The first section of the book on managing risks involved in generating, recognizing, and voicing original ideas I felt was its strongest. The second section dealt with the choices that we make to scale originality. The third section dealt with unleashing and sustaining originality, and Grant closes the book on emotions. The biggest criticism of this book is the fact that social science is not a hard science so some of the conclusions come across as coincidental or speculative. Grant is a master of noticing patterns but I still have a little reluctance to take all at face value. Interesting nonetheless, I recommend it! Further recommendations: ”Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us” by Daniel H. Pink, “Collaborate or Perish!: Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World” by William Bratton and Zachary Tumin, “Outliers” and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, “Just Start” by Leonard A. Schlesinger, “Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath, “Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business” by Thor Muller and Lane Becker “inGenius” by Tina Seelig, “Work with Me” by Barbara Annis and John Gray, “Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t” by Jeffrey Pfeffer, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success” by Rick Newman, and “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” by Daniel H. Pink.

I gave this book five stars, because it is well-written and informative for a Social Science/Business book. It provides the reader with practical applications for living a fuller life. Also, implicit in it are applications for living and sharing the Faith. Although this is not explicitly stated in the book, believers will see the connection and will be able to apply original thinking to their lives. To paraphrase Sacred Scripture, we are called to guard against conforming ourselves to this world. We are all called to be originals. By showing us how we can be more original and change the world for the better, Grant actually confirms this mission to improve our lives and culture. In fact, he discusses how building a commitment culture where many different people with varied backgrounds and creative ideas work together to achieve a particular mission. It was 100% successful when it managed to avoid groupthink. This was my favorite chapter in the book. I was expecting the parenting and teaching application chapter before it to be my favorite. He compared to companies that built a strong commitment culture in their business. One, Polaroid, became too homogeneous and experienced groupthink. They experienced too much conformity within their culture. Bridgewater, on the other han, was successful in maintaining their commitment culture and accomplishing their mission by encouraging nonconformity of thought. This is an excellent application for living and sharing the Faith, because we already have different people from races, countries, and cultures all over the world who share the same beliefs, but have many different ways of living and sharing them with the rest of the world. Our worldview is more positive and universal than that of the cultures of our country, even of western civilization. On the surface, it appears restrictive, but the boundaries provide the discipline within which we creatively unite to allow God to help us be the original souls we were meant to be and to reach other souls through us. I recommend this book for everyone who needs the courage and motivation to be original. The author puts a lot of faith in social science research, but the information is interesting and well illustrated even if it's limited. Each of us is unique and will never come again, so social science can only show habits within groups of people in certain cultures. It doesn't solve specific problems or provide original ideas, only people do. This book is written to fit a large group of people. If you are a believer, you will realize that you already have what you need to be original, because with God's help, you can discern which ideas to explore. If not, it's an excellent stepping stone. Read the book!

Êtes-vous plutôt Chrome ou Internet Explorer ? Si vous avez fait l’effort de télécharger Chrome plutôt que de vous contenter de l’explorateur par défaut, vous avez une prédisposition pour l’originalité et la capacité à sortir des sentiers battus. Une prédisposition sans doute accentuée si vous êtes le dernier né de votre fratrie : ils ont plus le goût de risque et la volonté de se distinguer que leurs aînés ! D’autres découvertes surprenantes vous attendent à la lecture de cette étude psychologique et sociologique des originaux et autres rebelles. L’auteur utilise de nombreux exemples tirés de l’entreprise et du monde de l’éducation. Il montre notamment combien le poids du groupe fait taire les originaux et prive le groupe de solutions créatives, voire le conduit à des échecs cuisants. L’ouvrage est riche d’enseignements sur la prise de risque : les personnalités originales se caractérisent par leur facilité à oser. Pour les autres, quelques principes simples permettent de prendre des risques mesurés et de faire face à la peur. Reconnaître sa peur et se préparer au pire est finalement plus efficace que de chercher à se rassurer. Cet ouvrage bouscule nos idées reçues et nous incite à changer nos comportements, tant au travail qu’en famille. Il s’appuie sur des études et des exemples précis, tout en étant passionnant à lire !

Grant continues to highlighs the characteristics of the business leaders. the book reviews the different aspects of the Non-Conformists behavious and traits. As in his other books, Grant's style of writing makes the journey with the book very enjoyable.

This is a very good read, particularly if you’re willing to make use of the wisdom, to take action. I liked the chapter about procrastination, it made me consider the benefits of procrastination. I’ll no longer see procrastination as something negative, but something that can actually be beneficial to the development of innovation and ideation.

.. and full of interesting hints also outside originality