Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Once again Professor Grant excites the audience by introducing and challenging the familiar and turns them on to provide a different illuminating perspective. I love the part about procrastination and the strategies to avoid group think.

I loved 'Give and Take' and I wanted to love Adam Grant's new book. I kept waiting to get blown away by a story or suggestion, but it never happened. This book was still worth reading, and maybe my expectations were simply too great.

Every chapter is packed with new insights that worth its own book. As I read each chapter I wonder more and more who wouldn't learn something from this book. Many books I read recently share 40-50% common ideas whereas for this book > 80% are new to me. The title makes it sound like it only applies to creators, the designers sort. But I get inspirations from it on how to become a better leader, a better domestic partner, a better child, a good parent when I have child, and a better friend. Just read it.

Originals offers inspiring examples of people who innovated to create a better world from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Jackie Robinson, Steve Jobs and many more. It challenges our thinking on what it means to be original and offers suggestions on how we as leaders can better generate and champion original ideas. The key message of the book is that we can all think originally and inspire positive change in our organizations. With research, data and memorable examples Grant offers creative new ways to consider the process of innovation and idea generation. He also offers ways to recognize and overcome anxieties that hinder original thinking and risk taking. Learn what causes groupthink and how to avoid it. Learn how age does not have to impact originality. Why being a pioneer with an idea does not always net the best long-term results. Learn the power of timing. Why procrastination is not always bad. Learn how siblings, parents, and mentors nurture originality. All this and much more.

It is my view that as Christians we should be the most "original" group of people as we steward our influence and originality as co-creators made in the image of God. In a very real sense, God created us to be creative. Christian nonprofit leaders tend to be originals who “embrace the uphill battle, striving to make the world what it could be.” We serve a creative God who has equipped us with the ability to innovate, take risks for the Kingdom, and boldly pursue God’s calling for our lives and our organizations. As Christian leaders we may not be "originals who move the world forward" but more so originals who partner with God in advancing His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The Christian leaders and ministries changing the world in our time embrace original thinking: whether it’s innovative ways to help people find and follow God worldwide; new approaches to church formation like online campuses and micro campuses/house campuses; new approaches for rescuing those who have been enslaved or trafficked; creative ways to spur micro-enterprise in the poorest reaches of our world or new paradigms on how to equip the next generation of Christian leaders.

With "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" we get more watered down much ado about business buzz terms in the creativity zeitgeist everywhere foisted upon us with writers who aren't Malcolm Gladwell or Po Bronson for that matter. You can read a review of this book and feel as though you have read it; if you want to make yourself vomit, add "Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World," by Pagan Kennedy -- more of the same. This cottage industry is wearing thin quickly.

Good book for promoting your inner ideas and supporting those thoughts of getting out of a rut and trying something new. We read Originals through a book club at work. While it contains supportive language to motivate yourself towards personal innovation, it also has a group sense feel that can help build work teams and support thinking out of the box and taking risks.

For a book meant to bring new light into the realm of Originality, this is nothing really new. It seems the author struggle to find interesting and counterintuitive curiosities to prove his points. Sometimes going a bit too far with some of them, to the point that it got boring. The fact that it was incredibly well researched helped, but it didn't quite saved the book.

Read it if you want to confirm whether you are a non conformist or not.. The book has simple and easy to understand counter intuitive arguments in favor of non conformist. What I miss is a holistic persona of a conformist despite clear explanation of the various attributes...

Originals offers inspiring examples of people who innovated to create a better world from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Jackie Robinson, Steve Jobs and many more. It challenges our thinking on what it means to be original and offers suggestions on how we as leaders can better generate and champion original ideas. The key message of the book is that we can all think originally and inspire positive change in our organizations. With research, data and memorable examples Grant offers creative new ways to consider the process of innovation and idea generation. He also offers ways to recognize and overcome anxieties that hinder original thinking and risk taking. Learn what causes groupthink and how to avoid it. Learn how age does not have to impact originality. Why being a pioneer with an idea does not always net the best long-term results. Learn the power of timing. Why procrastination is not always bad. Learn how siblings, parents, and mentors nurture originality. All this and much more.

It is my view that as Christians we should be the most "original" group of people as we steward our influence and originality as co-creators made in the image of God. In a very real sense, God created us to be creative. Christian nonprofit leaders tend to be originals who “embrace the uphill battle, striving to make the world what it could be.” We serve a creative God who has equipped us with the ability to innovate, take risks for the Kingdom, and boldly pursue God’s calling for our lives and our organizations. As Christian leaders we may not be "originals who move the world forward" but more so originals who partner with God in advancing His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The Christian leaders and ministries changing the world in our time embrace original thinking: whether it’s innovative ways to help people find and follow God worldwide; new approaches to church formation like online campuses and micro campuses/house campuses; new approaches for rescuing those who have been enslaved or trafficked; creative ways to spur micro-enterprise in the poorest reaches of our world or new paradigms on how to equip the next generation of Christian leaders.

With "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" we get more watered down much ado about business buzz terms in the creativity zeitgeist everywhere foisted upon us with writers who aren't Malcolm Gladwell or Po Bronson for that matter. You can read a review of this book and feel as though you have read it; if you want to make yourself vomit, add "Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World," by Pagan Kennedy -- more of the same. This cottage industry is wearing thin quickly.

Good book for promoting your inner ideas and supporting those thoughts of getting out of a rut and trying something new. We read Originals through a book club at work. While it contains supportive language to motivate yourself towards personal innovation, it also has a group sense feel that can help build work teams and support thinking out of the box and taking risks.

For a book meant to bring new light into the realm of Originality, this is nothing really new. It seems the author struggle to find interesting and counterintuitive curiosities to prove his points. Sometimes going a bit too far with some of them, to the point that it got boring. The fact that it was incredibly well researched helped, but it didn't quite saved the book.

Read it if you want to confirm whether you are a non conformist or not.. The book has simple and easy to understand counter intuitive arguments in favor of non conformist. What I miss is a holistic persona of a conformist despite clear explanation of the various attributes...

Originals is a wonderful book and incredibly relevant to women today. As much as I enjoyed Adam Grant's 'Give and Take' I felt that it was not very relevant to me as a woman in business because of the double standard that must not be named. I still loved the book since it really enhanced my understanding of my mentors and my dad. The last book's cursory review of gender differences is also a result of a writer who is basically respectful of women and advancing a provocative enough thesis without needing to muddy it with too many exceptions.

This book - Originals - is a perfect reflection of how thoughtful a writer he is in evolving his thinking not just to understand our transformative cultural moment but how he's so devoted to breaking things down into actions relevant to individuals. There can't be enough good things said about this book in its constructive approach to creative contribution but I'd like to dwell on a few points particularly germane to women.

Women in business have to work harder in socialising their ideas and in this book Adam Grant has solid advice on how to do this without glossing over anything unwieldy - get someone to believe in you - build your status to boost your credibility (or believability if you're in Bridgewater) - hold off sharing anything too radical in collaborations initially - beware of small differences - enemies are preferable to frenemies. I was blown away with how carefully he thinks through the process of not merely generating an original idea but having the strength of purpose and savvy to see it through. I loved learning from his diverse examples like the American feminist triumvirate of Stone, Stanton and Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr, Jackie Robinson and Ray Dalio. I appreciate Dalio's principles far more after reading this book than by reading the actual principles which is testament to how well Adam Grant synthesizes arcana.

With a radical topic like this and an intellectual heavyweight writer I was so pleasantly surprised to find the tone of the book is not preachy either - it's funny, brave and kind and just like reading an encouraging yet very practical 'you got this' email from a brother - well that's what Adam feels like a brother from another mother. And I think the section on how to raise moral and creative children is a great touch to a business book.

I have been looking forward to Adam’s next book since I first read “Give and Take” years ago, and I am very happy to say its another classic that I look forward to recommending and giving away to friends that ask for a book that can change their lives.
It’s a book about the best route to achieving true success in the world, and as usual Adam uncovers research and real life stories that sometimes contradict what normal convention might otherwise suggest (i.e., procrastinating strategically can lead to greatness).
This is a book for anyone looking for a leg up in today’s digital, transparent world that we live in today, whether you are a student or someone looking for improving themselves. Don’t be a taker, be a giver, and discover the superior way to creating a better life by being an “Original”.

This is a book which is very readable, flows well, and sticks to the theme of how non-conformists move the world. The book resonates with stories and examples to make each point. In some cases, the examples are around a particular success story. In other cases, the examples are around research efforts. The combination of the two lends both credibility and a convincing approach for people who might like a story over research or vice-versa.

"Originals" is full of counter-intuitive ideas from the conventional wisdom as well as re-packaging some conventional wisdom. Some key points that resonated for me were:
- For U.S. Presidents, the least effective leaders were those who followed the will of the people and the precedents set by their predecessors; the greatest were those who challenged the status quo and brought about sweeping changes that improved the lot of the country
- When pitching a new, novel idea, it is more effective to accentuate the flaws in your idea; it disarms and lets people know you’re not a brainless advocate
- Our best allies on original ideas can be the ones who started out against us and then came around to our side
- It is hard to change other people’s ideals; it is much easier to link our agendas to familiar values that people already hold
- It is best to vet ideas with a group and get dissenting opinions and talking them through before launching a big effort; dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong

Rather than using examples in the book, I thought of my own examples to either support or poke holes in the findings. For instance, on the presidents, as I thought through history, I agree that those following the opinion poll may have been popular, but didn't introduce sweeping improvements. OTOH, those making major changes often went through periods of very low popularity. For pitching a new idea, my biggest success with my bosses in the past have been exactly when I found some unwelcome holes in my argument and I raised them throughout the pitch. For best allies on new ideas, my biggest success was exactly when my most outspoken detractor and I sat down a month later to hash it out and he came around to my side. People really listened to him because they thought if he was won over, there must be something to it.

Anyway... I found the book most valuable when I could step back and think deeply about Grant's findings and see how they've played out in my life and experience or how they could play out. Fortunately Grant doesn't ramble, he writes well, and he sticks to his main point. I will certainly re-read.

This book is dull and doesn't provide any original flare and it's written so loosely. Sure there is a lot of quoted material but so much of the "supporting facts" seem far fetched with no detail so that to give the impression of concrete data. A lot of one line cheap supporting sentences to what should be intriguing and supporting stories. I do like the cover though lol

Some good ideas, part of them difficult to implement in practice. Entertaining read, with lot of data to support hypothesis. Lot of subjective thought and opinions based on own expirience, diminsh somewhat value of this book when viewed from practical use standpoint. Recommended for "out of the box" thinkers.

The moment I started reading Originals, I finally felt validated for my creative instincts and earnest behavior as a nonconforming child. All throughout my childhood and adolescence, I found myself at odds with the educational system. I never quite understood why crafting my own methods of creative solutions was always met with punishment from my teachers. Looking back, I had been showing signs of ingenuity and originality as I was seeking answers beyond the formulas prescribed by school canon. Adam Grant has a way of weaving his observations and research with an incredible degree of emotional intelligence, making this not only an informative read, but an enjoyable one as well. I highly recommend.

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

I bought this #1 national and NYT bestseller as soon as it came out. Given that I have always been a change agent and experimenter for decades, I feel like Adam was speaking to me. Adam, an esteemed professor at the Wharton Business school, who first wrote a prior recommended reading Give and Take is one of my favorite authors. His writing style is very approachable in that he seamlessly blends research and stories together.

I was curious to learn how people with original ideas can get others to buy into them. He got my attention immediately with the story of how Warby Parker, the company started by four young college students that sells affordable eye wear, debunks the myth that originals have to take huge risks to succeed. In fact, he proceeds to show that many companies including Warby Parker barely got off the ground because the founders are working other jobs and scared to cut bait and jump in.

He shares research that there are two types of creators – those that are conceptual innovators such as Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs who formulate big ideas and execute and those that are experimental innovators such as Leonardo da Vinci or Mark Twain who solve problems through trial and error. The conceptual innovators are sprinters and tend to peak in their early 40s, whereas the experimental innovators did their most influential work at 61. As an experimental innovator, I’ve come to realize why at age 55, I feel as though my best ideas are yet to come! and could relate to the story about how Leonardo da Vinci took several years to finish his most famous masterpiece, the Mona Lisa.

Throughout the book, Adam shares examples and practical tips for how to increase influence at work as well as to nurture young people and children to be more original. He includes extensive examples of successes and failures of social movements and business ventures. My favorite story was an analysis of the struggles the women’s suffrage movement from the early 1900’s encountered and why the movement ended up splintered and divided. He shares how Lucy Stone took a different approach that Susan Anthony or Elizabeth Stanton. Lucy sought out her enemies and converted them, whereas Anthony and Stanton did the opposite and alienated them. It is a reminder that enemies can be converted and diplomacy matters. He concludes the book with actions for impact and a summary of all of his tools. I highly recommend this book if you want to be more innovative, see your original ideas implemented, nurture creative children, or build a more supportive and innovative work place!

Top 10 Lessons from Originals:

1. They try a lot, fail a lot and Succeed a LOT. They don’t have better ideas than their peers. They just keep trying and trying.
2. Originals try a lot of ideas to get to a few good ones. Quantity and Quality are correlated. Originals persist instead of quitting. That’s the biggest difference.
3. First mover advantage is a myth. Facebook was not a 1st mover in social platforms. Google was not a 1st mover in search.
4. Originals challenge the rules (Rules and systems are after all created by people)
5. Originals have hobbies outside of work.
6. Mistakes we regret most are not those of commission but those of omission. You will regret what you did not go for.
7. Your identity is extremely powerful. Our identity defines our behavior – it’s better to tell people – don’t be a drunk driver rather than tell them – don’t drink and drive. The first appeals to their identity
8. Make fear your friend. In stressful situations – instead of calming yourself down, feel excited.
9. Know your worst case outcome.
10. The most accurate predictor of great idea is usually fellow creators who are doing similar things

For a full, free summary of the book and my podcast interview with Adam Grant, head on to 2000 books com

-Mani Vaya, Founder 2000 Books com (Online book summaries - Youtube channel, podcast, Website)

The book has good research. But Adam is not creative himself and is lubed into the echo chamber of being a Professor @ Wharton @ 34 - full on sheep mode. Learn from an experienced person. Cliches of Polaroid, bay of pigs, and "Yes Sheryl Sandberg" persona.

Adam does not believe in self-reflection or zoning out. (no wonder there is no creativity)
Beta males dance like robots. Lean in with the emasculated lumbersexuals...LOL.
I bought for $4.00 so it is an okay deal. Read once only.

Adam Grant accomplishes the barely possible with “Originals”: he writes a non-narrative account of industry and social science that’s so readable, putting it down feels like walking away from a fascinating conversation.

“When we marvel at the original individuals who fuel creativity and drive change in the world, we tend to assume they’re cut from a different cloth,” Grant writes, before setting out to debunk that myth. We all have “ideas for improving our workplaces, schools, and communities,” he says, but “many of us hesitate to take action.” Grant seeks to change that, sharing fascinating “studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment” that prod us to encourage originality in ourselves and others.

In addition to writing in accessible prose with a good eye for what information and anecdote will move and amuse, Grant effectively organizes and emphasizes his points, providing the reader with a roadmap that facilitates both attention and retention. Add in stellar pacing, and you’ve got a five-star book.

When it comes to parenting material, Grant doesn’t disappoint. “Originals” offers information of interest to caregivers throughout such as “[t]eachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers” and “[r]esearch on highly creative adults shows that they tended to move to new cities much more frequently than their peers in childhood.” The book also focuses in great detail on combating the statistical probabilities of birth order (“[y]ounger brothers were 10.6 times more likely than their older siblings to attempt to steal a base”) and raising children to have an internal moral compass (“give ‘explanations of why behaviors are inappropriate, often with reference to their consequences for others’”).

Grant writes in closing, “Becoming original is not the easiest path in the pursuit of happiness, but it leaves us perfectly poised for the happiness of pursuit.” This sentiment also applies to the parenting advice he offers: encouraging questioning and fighting one’s own impulses doesn’t make the day-to-day of raising children easy, but it prepares them for a fulfilling, fruitful, compassionate, and, yes, original life.

Review originally published at: [...]

I read three chapters of this and a New York Times Op-Ed by the author and gave up because he had made so many poor and misleading arguments. Grant too often misinterprets ideas, alters definitions, cherry-picks evidence, uses straw men, and relies on a rhetorical style that’s supposed to make him look like a flashy thinker whose book you should buy. He does this by, for instance, saying that to be “original,” you don’t need to be first: Friendster and MySpace were earlier social media platforms, as Grant notes in his TED talk, but Facebook is obviously the originality champion because it built on those failed platforms. The general thesis that Facebook is superior to Friendster and MySpace is defensible; the thing is, THAT’S NOT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ORIGINAL. Mr. Grant, your argument is that it’s NOT always good to be original! You can’t just change the definition of originality because our culture valorizes it and we all want to apply that high status label to ourselves.

Ultimately, this book claims to show you how to be a “noncomformist” with minimal risk. Anyone who truly is, by nature, a nonconformist will immediately recognize that he’s selling you snake oil.

That’s just one of many similar complaints I could make about much of his popular work. If you’re actually interested in originality, I’d recommend instead (in the same "entrepreneur bro" style of writing) The Art of Nonconformity, or, better yet, read the biographies of some truly original thinkers. Einstein comes immediately to mind.

I gave this two stars because the ideas in it could still be valuable to someone; I don't mean to claim that Grant never had a useful insight. But you’re going to have to have strong critical thinking barriers up to filter through the nonsense.

This book is dull and doesn't provide any original flare and it's written so loosely. Sure there is a lot of quoted material but so much of the "supporting facts" seem far fetched with no detail so that to give the impression of concrete data. A lot of one line cheap supporting sentences to what should be intriguing and supporting stories. I do like the cover though lol

Some good ideas, part of them difficult to implement in practice. Entertaining read, with lot of data to support hypothesis. Lot of subjective thought and opinions based on own expirience, diminsh somewhat value of this book when viewed from practical use standpoint. Recommended for "out of the box" thinkers.

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

I bought this #1 national and NYT bestseller as soon as it came out. Given that I have always been a change agent and experimenter for decades, I feel like Adam was speaking to me. Adam, an esteemed professor at the Wharton Business school, who first wrote a prior recommended reading Give and Take is one of my favorite authors. His writing style is very approachable in that he seamlessly blends research and stories together.

I was curious to learn how people with original ideas can get others to buy into them. He got my attention immediately with the story of how Warby Parker, the company started by four young college students that sells affordable eye wear, debunks the myth that originals have to take huge risks to succeed. In fact, he proceeds to show that many companies including Warby Parker barely got off the ground because the founders are working other jobs and scared to cut bait and jump in.

He shares research that there are two types of creators – those that are conceptual innovators such as Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs who formulate big ideas and execute and those that are experimental innovators such as Leonardo da Vinci or Mark Twain who solve problems through trial and error. The conceptual innovators are sprinters and tend to peak in their early 40s, whereas the experimental innovators did their most influential work at 61. As an experimental innovator, I’ve come to realize why at age 55, I feel as though my best ideas are yet to come! and could relate to the story about how Leonardo da Vinci took several years to finish his most famous masterpiece, the Mona Lisa.

Throughout the book, Adam shares examples and practical tips for how to increase influence at work as well as to nurture young people and children to be more original. He includes extensive examples of successes and failures of social movements and business ventures. My favorite story was an analysis of the struggles the women’s suffrage movement from the early 1900’s encountered and why the movement ended up splintered and divided. He shares how Lucy Stone took a different approach that Susan Anthony or Elizabeth Stanton. Lucy sought out her enemies and converted them, whereas Anthony and Stanton did the opposite and alienated them. It is a reminder that enemies can be converted and diplomacy matters. He concludes the book with actions for impact and a summary of all of his tools. I highly recommend this book if you want to be more innovative, see your original ideas implemented, nurture creative children, or build a more supportive and innovative work place!

Top 10 Lessons from Originals:

1. They try a lot, fail a lot and Succeed a LOT. They don’t have better ideas than their peers. They just keep trying and trying.
2. Originals try a lot of ideas to get to a few good ones. Quantity and Quality are correlated. Originals persist instead of quitting. That’s the biggest difference.
3. First mover advantage is a myth. Facebook was not a 1st mover in social platforms. Google was not a 1st mover in search.
4. Originals challenge the rules (Rules and systems are after all created by people)
5. Originals have hobbies outside of work.
6. Mistakes we regret most are not those of commission but those of omission. You will regret what you did not go for.
7. Your identity is extremely powerful. Our identity defines our behavior – it’s better to tell people – don’t be a drunk driver rather than tell them – don’t drink and drive. The first appeals to their identity
8. Make fear your friend. In stressful situations – instead of calming yourself down, feel excited.
9. Know your worst case outcome.
10. The most accurate predictor of great idea is usually fellow creators who are doing similar things

For a full, free summary of the book and my podcast interview with Adam Grant, head on to 2000 books com

-Mani Vaya, Founder 2000 Books com (Online book summaries - Youtube channel, podcast, Website)

The book has good research. But Adam is not creative himself and is lubed into the echo chamber of being a Professor @ Wharton @ 34 - full on sheep mode. Learn from an experienced person. Cliches of Polaroid, bay of pigs, and "Yes Sheryl Sandberg" persona.

Adam does not believe in self-reflection or zoning out. (no wonder there is no creativity)
Beta males dance like robots. Lean in with the emasculated lumbersexuals...LOL.
I bought for $4.00 so it is an okay deal. Read once only.

Adam Grant accomplishes the barely possible with “Originals”: he writes a non-narrative account of industry and social science that’s so readable, putting it down feels like walking away from a fascinating conversation.

“When we marvel at the original individuals who fuel creativity and drive change in the world, we tend to assume they’re cut from a different cloth,” Grant writes, before setting out to debunk that myth. We all have “ideas for improving our workplaces, schools, and communities,” he says, but “many of us hesitate to take action.” Grant seeks to change that, sharing fascinating “studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment” that prod us to encourage originality in ourselves and others.

In addition to writing in accessible prose with a good eye for what information and anecdote will move and amuse, Grant effectively organizes and emphasizes his points, providing the reader with a roadmap that facilitates both attention and retention. Add in stellar pacing, and you’ve got a five-star book.

When it comes to parenting material, Grant doesn’t disappoint. “Originals” offers information of interest to caregivers throughout such as “[t]eachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers” and “[r]esearch on highly creative adults shows that they tended to move to new cities much more frequently than their peers in childhood.” The book also focuses in great detail on combating the statistical probabilities of birth order (“[y]ounger brothers were 10.6 times more likely than their older siblings to attempt to steal a base”) and raising children to have an internal moral compass (“give ‘explanations of why behaviors are inappropriate, often with reference to their consequences for others’”).

Grant writes in closing, “Becoming original is not the easiest path in the pursuit of happiness, but it leaves us perfectly poised for the happiness of pursuit.” This sentiment also applies to the parenting advice he offers: encouraging questioning and fighting one’s own impulses doesn’t make the day-to-day of raising children easy, but it prepares them for a fulfilling, fruitful, compassionate, and, yes, original life.

Review originally published at: [...]

I read three chapters of this and a New York Times Op-Ed by the author and gave up because he had made so many poor and misleading arguments. Grant too often misinterprets ideas, alters definitions, cherry-picks evidence, uses straw men, and relies on a rhetorical style that’s supposed to make him look like a flashy thinker whose book you should buy. He does this by, for instance, saying that to be “original,” you don’t need to be first: Friendster and MySpace were earlier social media platforms, as Grant notes in his TED talk, but Facebook is obviously the originality champion because it built on those failed platforms. The general thesis that Facebook is superior to Friendster and MySpace is defensible; the thing is, THAT’S NOT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ORIGINAL. Mr. Grant, your argument is that it’s NOT always good to be original! You can’t just change the definition of originality because our culture valorizes it and we all want to apply that high status label to ourselves.

Ultimately, this book claims to show you how to be a “noncomformist” with minimal risk. Anyone who truly is, by nature, a nonconformist will immediately recognize that he’s selling you snake oil.

That’s just one of many similar complaints I could make about much of his popular work. If you’re actually interested in originality, I’d recommend instead (in the same "entrepreneur bro" style of writing) The Art of Nonconformity, or, better yet, read the biographies of some truly original thinkers. Einstein comes immediately to mind.

I gave this two stars because the ideas in it could still be valuable to someone; I don't mean to claim that Grant never had a useful insight. But you’re going to have to have strong critical thinking barriers up to filter through the nonsense.

Originals by Adam Grant is a marvelous book. In just 243 pages, Grant provides the reader all sorts of information. The major focus is on business practices with respect to originality and creativity, but he also addresses risk-taking, parenting styles, and how birth order affects the performance of baseball players. The reader will learn much, some counter-intuitive, about human behavior. Some of the counter-intuitive examples include: The advantages of procrastinating. Highlighting the negatives in a business proposal. Not being the first “out of the gate” with a new product.

While the major focus of Grant’s book concerns business practices, there is also a chapter on parenting practices and a separate chapter on decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis. Despite the disparate topics (birth order of baseball players, parenting styles, Cuban missile crisis etc.) Grant’s book makes a coherent whole.

This reviewer’s only object is the lack of discussion about ethics. For instance, in one of the earlier chapters, Grant reports on a study that customer services representatives who used one type of web browser were superior in performance to those who used another web browser. Do we really want to live in a society where hiring managers ask prospective employees what web browser they use?

Despite the lack of a discussion regarding ethical issues, Originals still merits five stars.

Wanted to give a high recommendation for the non-fiction book “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World” by Adam Grant. Before you make judgments based on the title, understand this isn’t ‘rebel without a cause’ material. This book applies to businessmen, writers, inventors, administrative staff, scientists—basically any job for which independent thinking ought to be a necessary (not optional) part of the job.

I’m sure part of the reason it appealed to me is I work in an industry that is utterly concrete-set in inertia and couldn’t move off the same track even if a train was headed straight at them full speed ahead. Couple that with the trials of trying to be creative minded in a world where the pace of life does its best to strip you of every creative molecule in your body and you’ve got a reader desperate to know if there’s any way to improve creativity and in the bigger picture move people and companies out of their complete inertia and willingness to settle for the status quo—a status quo that often ensures that people suffer needlessly.

Yes, there are a billion leadership and business books out there. But this one is worth the time. I first borrowed it from the library, now I've bought my own copy to mark up and return to again and again.

What does it take to act on an original idea? Are entrepreneurs risk-takers or calculating risk-taker? We learn from the careful research of Adam Grant in ORIGINALS that successful entrepreneurs are careful risk-takers. Instead of jumping off a cliff, these entrepreneurs took calculated risks to begin their business. For example, everyone likes to talk about how Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to begin Microsoft. It was through listening to ORIGINALS, I learned Gates took a calculated risk and a “leave of absence” from Harvard.

Another fascinating chapter was about the value of procrastination and doing deliberate procrastination. DaVinci delayed completing the Mona Lisa and during those years learned all sorts of lighting techniques that he built into the final painting. Also Grant explains that that people who are prolific--lots of writing and ideas--have more of a chance of having an original idea than people who only write every now and then. It is one of the principles that Grant mentions in his book.

I enjoyed listening to this audio book from cover to cover.

W. Terry Whalin is an editor and the author of more than 60 books including his latest Billy Graham: A Biography of America's Greatest Evangelist

I generally steer clear of anything like self-help books, but after being exposed to some of the ideas in Originals via podcasts and articles, I decided to give it a go. The reason I dislike self-help books is two fold, 1) it’s typically decent advice that doesn’t merit a whole book and thus becomes self-parody partway through 2) they never acknowledge how much of success is related to factors outside of the reader’s control, because if the reader doesn’t believe this one easy trick will fix their life, they won’t feel good and people won’t buy the book. So what I respect about Originals is that it acknowledges the limitations of making assertions without data, so even when points are supported anecdotally, they’re fairly presented. Secondly, Grant acknowledges the messiness and uncertainty around the issues about which he is writing. He clearly states that women and people of color are at a disadvantage when trying to make changes in a system when they see flaws, etc. Moreover, not one aspect of the bookfeels like obvious advice. Sometimes, human nature works in counterintuitive ways, which means working with people/organizations involves counterintuitive strategies. This was at the core of what I got out of the book about non-conformity: it was reassuring that my unusual ways of dealing with decision making, creativity, human relationships, etc, are often advantageous without my knowing it. I of course learned a lot of ways to improve as well, but as someone who always felt reaching her goals would involve changing a lot about herself, I found myself relieved by almost every chapter. A

We live in great times where not only more people have accessibility to work in start-ups that promote originality, but the skill of creativity is shifting over the skill of specialization to take over its place as the main lingua franca for adding value to any shape and size of business. Despite the author being a talented professor, consulting to many high profile companies, and balancing his life between work and personal life, with the help of his work and personal experiences, studies he conducted, and his broad readings of several topics, he managed to write a book with lessons about what an original is through different perspectives.

To say he managed is kind of a dreadful word, to say the least. At the time of writing, he put effort on passages that we are most familiar with and has participated in TEDx and other hosts to promote the main messages of the book. The main problem is at the surface, at the size of 200 pages, the book tries to look like it's going to tell two to three memorable main highlights of being original, but as you dive down the rabbit hole, you obviously find out that it is crammed with so many concepts, that it deserved to be a 600 to 800 page cookbook (or a trilogy), so the readers could have had a 100% buy-in to its message. I am not joking you, but at the end of the book, there is a section called "Actions For Impact" that has a list of 30 items in order to be more "Original". That is the actual amount of content that it crammed inside the book. But you have to understand, from the author's perspective, this set of perspectives are illustrated in how a social scientist would use those concepts at work: findings of human behavior are not so practical if they are already given bundled as a finished house, as much delivered as lego pieces that allow you the flexibility to build your own customized house based on your own customized situation. There are great books that drill you to a specific style of house to build and just follow the IKEA instructions, but this one gives you only the pieces, and without instructions, you have to work the rest out for yourself. For that reason, many concepts of the books are not discussed much in depth aside providing evidence through highlighting past main events and the results of the studies conducted.

Arguably, given this book comes from the academic background, research studies show up more often than from your average joe or full-time journalist, which gets some time to get adjusted to. It leaves you to wonder if on occasions whether only the main studies should have been in the book and the rest left on the footer reference, so more space could be added on explaining those studies in layman terms with charts and graphs on occasions. In addition, a lot of the stories discussed in this book come from readings that you would have done as a student through history (women rights, civil rights). Despite all that, there are plenty, and I mean plenty of stories that are business oriented, but in contrast to the rest of the journalists that write those self-enrichment books fully based on organizations and businesses, it is a nice mix this book diversified to explore originality through the historical movements as well.

But aside the formatting and presentation of the book, the meat of the book are the lego pieces that it provides for enabling us to be original. The main thesis of the book is that anybody can be original. In other words, it focuses more on the software (our culture, upbringing, mindset, reactions) instead of the hardware (our physical brain and genetics). It shows just by changing some subtle elements of our external environment, it can influence or adapt our software to conduct more originality. This book in several chapters implicitly tries to emphasize that by putting civil rights movement passages that gave women the rights to vote and black people to be treated equally as white. At the time of writing this, there is this tension again, a war about nature versus nurture, and albeit there is no doubt the scientific revolution shifted us from nature controlling us to controlling nature, there is now this momentum of tectonic plates shifting due to social forces where our identity will not be taken into account anymore by our own physical nature, but how we nurture our self through the span of time, as after all, anything that is derived from nature can be learned through nurture. The problem will be in a stall if we focus whether nature and nurture take a bigger or lesser part of the pie instead of having a mutual understanding of the important roles that nature and nurture took facilitating part in spreading niche roles and later integrating them between the past and in our present. Only by looking at the big picture we can move on forward with the future. So in my opinion, I feel the book did not have an "authentic" devil advocate on the aspect of whether nature had a special handicap for some being more enabled on promoting originality, losing some balanced view on the merits of nature vs nurture.

Compared to the rest of the self-enrichment books, Grants conducts experimental studies, which makes him not shy to show what people would default do when they are not prepared for a situation they have not prepared before. We expect that in the future people will be more prepared to have some consciousness on making better choices, but admissible enough, we currently are not, and we look those pieces from the lens of our current perspectives society reacts through our actions.

Chapter 1: Discusses that the most successful originals have always had a hard disk backup that is less lucrative when their original production idea fails. I really have to add that risk and control (which are discussed in chapter 6 as elements usually last born and firstborn correspondingly have) are very complimentary. Usually, each confounder picks their own niche: one taking the risk and another keeping a backup plan so all bases in the business are covered. But despite different mindset perspectives on how we handle the environment, elements of commitment and domain knowledge and other factors play a vital role for a business to be successful. Otherwise, if Warby Parker did not have co-founders committed and had the domain knowledge, they sure would be trailblazing trees, but not the whole forest.

Chapter 2: Iterates in more depth the importance of domain knowledge for getting the timing right of ideas that even if they are applicable currently, they have to run smoothly instead of a bumpy ride when they are executed. Maybe those handy middle borns discussed on the footnotes of Chapter 6 are good at being diplomatic and can fit the bill of adjusting the idea properly. For ideas that cannot be penetrated today, people have the choice to present the idea through science fiction, as after all, they become the role models for our future generations. Or if you have proven to be successful with existing ideas and you need a nod push for others to buy in, then a usual podcast would do.

Chapter 3: The first part talks about familiarity. In some sense, it is similar to the "sandwich" effect, which all studies suggest that if people always get self-bias in some sources of truth as being valid, by brand or by popular celebrity name, then if you want them to recommend them something they are unfamiliar, you have higher chances to trigger them to become active on it by throwing something familiar. The second part of the chapter discusses the four stages of changing or keeping the status quo: exit/voice and neglect/persistence respectively. It's good that he advocates to not exit an organization for changing the status quo, especially if you are very committed to change the situation, but unless you can find alternative or similar options that you are passionate and allow you to be change agents, unless this is the only roadmap and you feel it is a high priority, there may be greener pastures you should explore. Because everything is now flat and we forgot hierarchy can loom in implicitly, the author illustrates the most common pitfall juniors in this age are not familiar with: the more hierarchical the organization is, the more voicing their concerns without earning the proper experience points and not communicating through the proper channels, the less effective it will be.

Chapter 4: Discusses that innovation is more than creating new ideas and more improving existing ideas. But then again, this contradicts with crossing the chasm. For instance, Google+ social network improved organizing your connections with "Circles" and Snapchat created an ephemeral communication. Despite its drawbacks where your conversation could be your wildest fantasy, it at least had the environment of being psychological safe to discuss something you would be afraid to discuss on other social networks due to its ephemeral nature. Once a company "crosses the chasm", who will be the settler is less democratic where the best-improved ideas win. We live in an era now where companies "care" about the ideas so much, that there will be fewer occurrences where Facebook takes the space of Myspace. The last part discusses people who innovate slowly versus the ones that innovate fast. The ones that innovate fast focus on ideas that can be done now while the ones who innovate slow focus on concepts that will come in the near future or the long term future.

Chapter 5: This is a continuation of chapter 3 in what if you want to persist on voicing your opinion. The answer to that is by being a tempered radical. If you see someone being irrational by following others that do not align with their idea, it is most likely because they adjust the idea to currently fit in the world albeit not to their standards, but close to their standards. It is lowering our expectations and getting something out of our ambitions instead of nothing. Also, discusses which allies you should join with. Allies that are neutral do not have many positions and they will not stand with you, especially if they don't have any care about what they stand. Allies that are frenemies sounds schizophrenic, so unless you want to do circles, it is better to just watch grass grow. There is no doubt that to be original you have to be a good communicator to scale the idea across.

Chapter 6: Discusses how later-borns pick up the role of standing out original as a niche due to the non-existence and negligence of the role of parenting in the late stages of a couple. Discusses how more mindful and care our future original generations and their offsprings will be when parents make their children think on their own by giving discipline lessons with values instead of rules. Lastly, since a child has not made a mental framework on how to handle the world yet until they reach adulthood, role model heroes and science fiction are the pillars that can take a big part of the influence on preparing on to who we want to be.

Chapter 7: To deviate groupthink, allow a culture that allows openness on discussing with authenticity the flaws of others. We can artificially avoid group thinking by creating the effect artifacts of problems instead of solutions to the organization, which forces us to create our intentions on discussing flaws instead of having a mutual agreement.

Chapter 8: Anxiety is part of the process on high cognitive skills that include uncertainty and this fumbling part is just a part of the process of organizing unstructured information. The only way to be motivated is focusing on the end result, sometimes exaggerated to the point it feels intangible like Plato's Forms of Goods. That means if our expected way of doing stuff does not bring our current reward we expected, we have to change our strategy through other means until we get it right. This desire and urgency of getting the reward, by all means (which always gets triggered when a business goes into crisis), avoids us on the insanity of doing the same thing and expecting different results and instead think differently to accomplish the impossible possible.

And that wraps up my perspective of the elements discussed for being original. These views are many sided so I recommend to take a read of the book and create your own version of a house out of the lego pieces provided for what an original represents.

Though the subtitle promises a topic that turns out to be more of a side point than a central premise, "Originals" does offer a pleasant grab bag of research about innovators, particularly its counterintuitive assertions about the backgrounds of people who start companies, the effect of birth order on character development, and the myths of "culture fit" in the workplace. However, its recounting and analysis of the suffrage movement and various revolutions gets a little tedious--I'd rather just read original works by historians on these events, without an attempt to demonstrate their supposedly practical implications for modern-day activists. I found no single throbbing, central point to the book, but as a source of assorted ideas on how to advance your movement or ideas, you're bound to find something worthwhile.

I was interested in learning more about Adam Grant after reading Tim Ferriss’ and Sheryl Sandberg’s books.Grant delivers an inspirational message the everyone has the opportunity to make impact and challenge the status quo in their organizations and lives. He includes examples from the Civil Rights movement, famous startups, and the entertainment industry. At the end the key concepts are summed up. You will feel motivated and excited to adopt originality after reading this book!

I was very moved by Dr. Grant's first book, Give and Take, and have followed his research and writing in the time since. When I heard he was coming out with a second book and that the topic was as new and (forgive me) original as this one, I couldn't wait for it to arrive!

Just as his first book was, Originals is packed with research tidbits that I've really enjoyed reading and sharing with my friends and coworkers. I don't want to give up any spoilers (how often does a research-based book have spoilers??) but in every chapter, there's a nugget or two (or twelve) that totally caught me by surprise and challenged my assumptions of what original thought—and original thinkers—look like.

A lot of reviews here are written by people who have always known that they were originals, but this one's for the rest of us out there who have maybe felt a little more... normal. Possibly even boring. Certainly not like the types of crazy original people you read about who change the world in wild and daring ways. So my favorite thing about reading this book was recognizing bits of myself in Dr. Grant's descriptions of originals. Turns out originals DO feel doubt, and they DO procrastinate and try to mitigate risk and all kinds of other things that I do, all of which I assumed doomed me to a life of dreary normalcy.

If you're wondering who could benefit from receiving/reading this book, there's just as much to learn about how to be an original yourself as there is to learn about how to foster and promote this kind of original thinking in others. I've now given out several copies to people in my life who I think would be inspired by the message, including my boss, for exactly this reason: this is the way I want my boss to be thinking about my professional (and personal) development. Just like Give and Take, Originals helped me to imagine a not-too-distant future in which organizations recognize their hidden gems and do a better job of supporting them, for everyone's benefit, and it gave me actionable steps to get this change started.

This book was fun to read in all the best ways: entertaining and informative but also unexpected, even provocative. Really glad I picked it up—who knows, maybe this was my first step (yeah, boring old me!) toward changing the world :)

Originals is entertainingly written and is on the lines of Gladwells style. It's definitely above some of the other pseudo business books which take the material of a blog post and then stretch it to fill a book. Originals is far above that. But therein lies the problem, it's not groundbreaking _enough_ and I felt the author has the potential to do that.

Typically the books that would fall into the groundbreaking category in my mind are - 1. highly original thinking, far away from mainstream where the author pays no attention to conforming to accepted opinions(e.g Nassim Taleb's works, Zero to One by Thiel) 2. Autobiographies in which the author just says it from the heart and backs with personal experience (plenty such books, recently I read Virgin Way by Branson) and 3. Authoritative work in the field which is comprehensive (example: Thinking, Fast and Slow).

Unfortunately Originals misses the mark even though I'm convinced that the author has the potential to do so. I think that Originals need not have copied the Gladwell style which has been exploited to death and feels like cheap thrills in today's day and age. I hope Grants next book will be more Original

Filled with inspiring stories about real life people who not only refused to conform but also were able to influence others to follow them after overcoming all odds against them. I got a bit teary eyed! Also a lot of interesting studies and interviews! So many tips on how to create a meaningful and creative life even when the world is pushing for conformity! The book also includes a section on how to teach children these concepts as well! Very thorough work of non fiction!

Early in the book I encountered the phrase "practice makes perfect." Please, practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent. And then there was the Carmen Medina example of how she overcame all these obstacles to produce Intellipedia even though her CIA betters thought it was a bad idea to put everything out there for everyone to read. I stopped reading this book at page 77 so it is possible the author might have came around later to address how Edward Snowden was able to gain access to the horde of documents that was leaked in 2013. And then there was the Sarick effect. The author essentially lies to the reader by inventing fake psychological phenomenon to prove a point later in the book. Please, I have enough worthless information in my head, if I wanted to read fiction I'll read Clive Cussler.

Adam Grant is a friend of Wall Street and Silicon Valley elites, hence his renown. Unfortunately, buzz words and ideas are often times valued over substance in society. I found the book, which is understandable trying to appeal to the masses, lacking in scientific rigor, which results in incorrect conclusions.

The book uses case studies -- specific individuals and organizations -- to illustrate the point of each chapter. That is helpful in terms of getting the reader to clearly understand his theory and recommendations. However, the studies cited are selected only to support his theory, leaving out evidence that doesn't. I read the book when it first came out and found it troubling, mostly because he never defined his criteria for originality. If someone or an organization excelled at something, it automatically meant that s(he) or it was original. That is obviously false.

Fast forward to July 2016, the New York Times ran a piece on "At World’s Largest Hedge Fund, Sex, Fear and Video Surveillance", followed by a series of other articles on the culture at the hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, the centerpiece of the chapter, "Rethinking Groupthink". Grant starts the chapter citing that a general impression among the students at Wharton Business School is that Bridgewater had the culture that students most desired to work at (this in itself is perhaps evidence of groupthink at Wharton). In any case, this led Grant to study the organization's culture extensively. Throughout the chapter, he heralded the organization's culture as an example of how organizations could promote and maintain originality. Apparently, the superb fund performance is a result of the fund's culture, which inspired originality. But, the unique and secretive culture that encouraged employees to challenge each other to the point of public humiliation became the subject of the Times articles on its internal abuse, leading to Ray Dalio's stepping down as the CEO in March 2017.

I have found no comments from Grant regarding the outcome of his business school case study and how it stands counter to his portrayal of Bridgewater. There should be some accountability by a reputable social scientist. That aside, the bottom line is evidence is not strong enough to back up his theories on how to become an "original". The same problem can be found in his other book, Give & Take.

We are working with a client on a project to support and develop top innovation achievers. One of the books we uncovered is “Originals” by Adam Grant. It sums up a lot of the thinking from other business thinkers.

The book starts with this quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man".

This book is about becoming the unreasonable man or women. With surprisingly reasonable or common sense conclusions and tips.

What browser do you use?

Starting with your browser. Nothing to do with filter bubbles, but everything to do with attitude.

Employees who used Firefox or Chrome to browse the Web remained in their jobs 15 percent longer than those who used Internet Explorer or Safari. The employees who took the initiative to change their browsers to Firefox or Chrome approached their jobs differently.

Mastery?

You need to be a master in what you do. But at the same time realising that practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new. Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience. And because the pace of change is accelerating, our environments are becoming ever more unpredictable. This makes intuition less reliable as a source of insight about new ideas. Originality remains an act of creative destruction. Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a choice.

You need to procrastinate

True originals take a long time. The proposals from the procrastinators were 28 percent more creative. Delaying progress enabled them to spend more time considering different ways to accomplish it, instead of “seizing and freezing” on one particular strategy. In ancient Egypt, there were two different verbs for procrastination: one denoted laziness; the other meant waiting for the right time.

In ancient Egypt, there were two different verbs for procrastination: one denoted laziness; the other meant waiting for the right time.

You need fellow creators to assess you idea

The biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection.When managers vet novel ideas, they’re in an evaluative mindset. To protect themselves against the risks of a bad bet, they compare the new notion on the table to templates of ideas that have succeeded in the past. Focus groups are effectively set up to make the same mistakes as managers. So neither test audiences nor managers are ideal judges of creative ideas. But there is one group of forecasters that does come close: fellow creators evaluating one another’s ideas. When artists assessed one another’s performances, they were about twice as accurate as managers and test audiences in predicting success.

You need to study art

Nobel Prize winners were dramatically more likely to be involved in the arts than less accomplished scientists. A representative study of thousands of Americans showed similar results for entrepreneurs and inventors. People who started businesses and contributed to patent applications were more likely than their peers to have leisure time hobbies that involved drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, and literature. Just as scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors often discover novel ideas through broadening their knowledge to include the arts, we can likewise gain breadth by widening our cultural repertoires. Research on highly creative adults shows that they tended to move to new cities much more frequently than their peers in childhood, which gave them exposure to different cultures and values, and encouraged flexibility and adaptability.

You need to add familiarity to your idea

Take a look at this list of familiar songs. Pick one of them and tap the rhythm to it on a table. Now, what do you think the odds are that one of your friends would recognise the song you’re tapping?

This is the core challenge of speaking up with an original idea. When you present a new suggestion, you’re not only hearing the tune in your head. You wrote the song. You’ve spent hours, days, weeks, months, or maybe even years thinking about the idea. This explains why we often under communicate our ideas.

You need to create an exposure effect —the more familiar a face, letter, number, sound, flavour, brand, or Chinese character becomes, the more we like it. “Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt,” says serial entrepreneur Howard Tullman. “It breeds comfort.”

To come up with something original, you need to begin from a more unfamiliar place and then add familiarity, which capitalises on the exposure effect. On average, a novel starting point followed by a familiarity infusion led to ideas that were judged as 14 percent more practical, without sacrificing any originality.

You should not be too radical

The Goldilocks theory of coalition formation. The originals who start a movement will often be its most radical members, whose ideas and ideals will prove too hot for those who follow their lead. To form alliances with opposing groups, it’s best to temper the cause, cooling it as much as possible. Originals must often become tempered radicals.

You need to create a common passion

Commitment blueprints worked to build strong emotional bonds among employees and to the organisation. They often used words like family and love to describe the companionship in the organisation, and employees tended to be intensely passionate about the mission. Startups with founders that had a commitment blueprint, the failure rate of their firms was zero—not a single one of them went out of business.

You need to create dissenting voices

However, existing companies in volatile settings like the computer, aerospace, and airline industries, the benefits of strong cultures disappear. Company performance only improved when CEOs actively gathered advice from people who weren’t their friends and brought different insights to the table, which challenged them to fix mistakes and pursue innovations.Minority viewpoints are important, not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought, They contribute to the detection of novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, are qualitatively better. Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong.

Maverick in residence

Which is why we like the maverick in residence as a concept so much. It creates the necessary dialogue to improve your organisation.

Idea meritocracy

The book uses Bridgewater Associates. Headquartered in a Connecticut as an example. Its philosophy is outlined in a set of over two hundred principles written by the founder. In a typical organisation, people are punished for raising dissent. At Bridge-water, they’re evaluated on whether they speak up—and they can be fired for failing to challenge the status quo.

In hiring, instead of using similarity to gauge cultural fit, Bridgewater assesses cultural contribution. It wants people who will think independently and enrich the culture. By holding them accountable for dissenting, Dalio has fundamentally altered the way people make decisions. The goal is to create an idea meritocracy, where the best ideas win.

You need get angry

If you want people to modify their behaviour, you need to highlight costs of not changing. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss. Once commitment is fortified, instead of glancing in the rearview mirror, it’s better to look forward by highlighting the work left to be done.

When we’re determined to reach an objective, it’s the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us. Anger counteracts apathy: We feel that we’ve been wronged, and we’re compelled to fight.

Other tips:

don’t take too much risk
don’t believe in first mover advantage
work hard
quantity over quality
have a vision
Be old

I am fifty years old. The best news from the book was that there is evidence that older employees tend to submit more ideas and higher-quality ideas than their younger colleagues, with the most valuable suggestions coming from employees older than fifty-five.

Talent Management
Creativity Skills
Innovation Management

I want to like Adam Grant.

In a shorter medium (blogs and articles in places like HBR), he has written some smart things, and he has worked professionally with people I like.

His books seem to miss the mark though. His first, Give and Take, had some interesting ideas in it. It is just that Grant seems to have this thought where he should be publishing on a big idea. Therefore, in that first book, he created a trichotomy where people fit in one of three categories professionally – you were either a giver, a taker, or a matcher. The key was to be the giver. However, there was a weird caveat that it was not all givers. I liked the book well enough that I remember that taxonomy that he drew, but it felt like a letdown because it relied too heavily on a few examples.

It is as if he does take that big idea he wants to talk about, finds the examples, and then uses them as a highlight. Maybe it is a narrative thing he’s doing (he does call himself a social scientist in this book more than once), trying to use examples to tell a better story because data is not as fun to read on the train, I don’t know. But he makes the same choices in Originals as he did in Give and Take.

Therefore, that lead me, as I was reading, to try to think of this book and how I would describe it. In one sense, it does feel like it is pointed towards some self-satisfied liberal elite establishment pseudo-intellectual thing. I mean, look at the blurbs. Sheryl Sandberg helped edit it as per the acknowledgements, and she wrote the forward. It is blurbed by Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Branson, Ariana Huffington, and Peter Thiel, to show you what the intended audience is. For what it’s worth, it feels like an extended TED talk. For me, that is not a charitable comparison, but it may appeal to some people.

All this is not to say that there is not valuable information and insights embedded in the book. There is a part about Martin Luther King prepping his famous “I have a Dream Speech”. There is an extended section on the birth of the women’s suffrage that brought to my attention an important figure in American history I was very unaware of. The problem is that these sections were used to illustrate the broader points that Grant was speaking on and it may not have been the best fit (the lessons were “procrastination can be useful” and then “build coalitions”). It is as if Grant is just pulling in the things that are interesting to him and trying to apply them to the larger idea that being original is good.

This of course is true. But for me the most troubling thing was that originality as looked at in the book was focused mostly on business success, with a side of politics. The only originality that Grant wrote of in the arts was in comedy – nothing about Duchamp or John Cage, but we learn how birth order may influence how often a baseball player steals a base. My guess is that art is just too far outside of Grant’s domain for him to write cogently on it, but it is a huge blind spot in a book about the importance of originality (No “Make it new” or worrying about the anxiety of influence). Nevertheless, perhaps that is just showing my domain preferences.

Full of quick, easy-to-read and easy to understand examples that challenge conceptions about innovation and change the way people will view their own habits and how business leaders will view potential candidates and the work environment. Not every example will pertain to each reader, but each reader can take something from Grant's book.

The path to becoming an original isn’t guaranteed. It’s a struggle, and without a map, the journey can be maddening. In Originals, Adam Grant does an excellent job of constructing that map for us. Through stories and carefully selected research, he presents us a map of the frontier territory where originality can be won.

Originals is packed with proof that anyone can break free from conformity. Malcolm Gladwell started down this road, but Grant takes us into uncharted territory. He delivers new, actionable insights and guides us towards well-reasoned points.

Grant’s work teaches us how to embrace paradox as we explore and endure the necessary trials required in becoming original. Through its pages, readers can uncover an operating system to become a monopoly of one.

Originals is a well-edited treatise to guide those who seek to break free from conformity and start the journey towards originality. It also, perhaps most importantly, provides us context and symbols to help enjoy that journey.

You can't ask for much more from a non-fiction book!

Adam Grant does an excellent job tearing down some of our most cherished ideas and myths about how to stand out and succeed. There is something in this book for everyone to LEARN and DO to become "Original". As a father of young children, I especially appreciate Grant's section on how to instill non-conformity in the next generation.

I am looking forward to reading Grant's other book, Give and Take.

About 2/3 of this is very interesting. Some of the same old, same old examples but it does get into birth order, parenting, and the processes that seem to grow non-conformists. However, towards the end of the book (audio) it goes on and on and on about social change, revolution etc. It's almost a manifesto about his ideas for changing the world with very little mention of "originals". I may have to find a print copy to better analyze the content but I find the latter one-fourth to one third to be off topic. That said, I found the early chapters quite interesting and would have rated this 3 and 1/2 stars if possible.

This book has and will continue to shape the way I think, behave, create and interact. By far the best book I have read in the last three years. It should be required reading in higher business education.

Materialized in the form of data and words for something I feel like I have had a vague feelings of. It reaffirms my believe in innovation. But who knows, I might be the subject of conformation bias. Either way, I enjoyed reading this book.

I really like this book. Grant dismissed the idea that to be entrepeneur we must quit our daily jobs; the idea that if you dont like your job you should leave no matter what; he presents new concepts that are actually more close to the reality. For someone who is looking for learning and creating new ideas this book is an excellent guide to do it.

Many of the concepts espoused in this book ran counter to the common wisdom. Yet, the author Adam Grant was able to clearly set out the logic and research behind the concepts. One example was the idea that procrastination has its benefits that I never even thought of.Wonderful and fascinating, this book has full of innovative ideas.

We are working with a client on a project to support and develop top innovation achievers. One of the books we uncovered is “Originals” by Adam Grant. It sums up a lot of the thinking from other business thinkers.

The book starts with this quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man".

This book is about becoming the unreasonable man or women. With surprisingly reasonable or common sense conclusions and tips.

What browser do you use?

Starting with your browser. Nothing to do with filter bubbles, but everything to do with attitude.

Employees who used Firefox or Chrome to browse the Web remained in their jobs 15 percent longer than those who used Internet Explorer or Safari. The employees who took the initiative to change their browsers to Firefox or Chrome approached their jobs differently.

Mastery?

You need to be a master in what you do. But at the same time realising that practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new. Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience. And because the pace of change is accelerating, our environments are becoming ever more unpredictable. This makes intuition less reliable as a source of insight about new ideas. Originality remains an act of creative destruction. Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a choice.

You need to procrastinate

True originals take a long time. The proposals from the procrastinators were 28 percent more creative. Delaying progress enabled them to spend more time considering different ways to accomplish it, instead of “seizing and freezing” on one particular strategy. In ancient Egypt, there were two different verbs for procrastination: one denoted laziness; the other meant waiting for the right time.

In ancient Egypt, there were two different verbs for procrastination: one denoted laziness; the other meant waiting for the right time.

You need fellow creators to assess you idea

The biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection.When managers vet novel ideas, they’re in an evaluative mindset. To protect themselves against the risks of a bad bet, they compare the new notion on the table to templates of ideas that have succeeded in the past. Focus groups are effectively set up to make the same mistakes as managers. So neither test audiences nor managers are ideal judges of creative ideas. But there is one group of forecasters that does come close: fellow creators evaluating one another’s ideas. When artists assessed one another’s performances, they were about twice as accurate as managers and test audiences in predicting success.

You need to study art

Nobel Prize winners were dramatically more likely to be involved in the arts than less accomplished scientists. A representative study of thousands of Americans showed similar results for entrepreneurs and inventors. People who started businesses and contributed to patent applications were more likely than their peers to have leisure time hobbies that involved drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, and literature. Just as scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors often discover novel ideas through broadening their knowledge to include the arts, we can likewise gain breadth by widening our cultural repertoires. Research on highly creative adults shows that they tended to move to new cities much more frequently than their peers in childhood, which gave them exposure to different cultures and values, and encouraged flexibility and adaptability.

You need to add familiarity to your idea

Take a look at this list of familiar songs. Pick one of them and tap the rhythm to it on a table. Now, what do you think the odds are that one of your friends would recognise the song you’re tapping?

This is the core challenge of speaking up with an original idea. When you present a new suggestion, you’re not only hearing the tune in your head. You wrote the song. You’ve spent hours, days, weeks, months, or maybe even years thinking about the idea. This explains why we often under communicate our ideas.

You need to create an exposure effect —the more familiar a face, letter, number, sound, flavour, brand, or Chinese character becomes, the more we like it. “Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt,” says serial entrepreneur Howard Tullman. “It breeds comfort.”

To come up with something original, you need to begin from a more unfamiliar place and then add familiarity, which capitalises on the exposure effect. On average, a novel starting point followed by a familiarity infusion led to ideas that were judged as 14 percent more practical, without sacrificing any originality.

You should not be too radical

The Goldilocks theory of coalition formation. The originals who start a movement will often be its most radical members, whose ideas and ideals will prove too hot for those who follow their lead. To form alliances with opposing groups, it’s best to temper the cause, cooling it as much as possible. Originals must often become tempered radicals.

You need to create a common passion

Commitment blueprints worked to build strong emotional bonds among employees and to the organisation. They often used words like family and love to describe the companionship in the organisation, and employees tended to be intensely passionate about the mission. Startups with founders that had a commitment blueprint, the failure rate of their firms was zero—not a single one of them went out of business.

You need to create dissenting voices

However, existing companies in volatile settings like the computer, aerospace, and airline industries, the benefits of strong cultures disappear. Company performance only improved when CEOs actively gathered advice from people who weren’t their friends and brought different insights to the table, which challenged them to fix mistakes and pursue innovations.Minority viewpoints are important, not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought, They contribute to the detection of novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, are qualitatively better. Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong.

Maverick in residence

Which is why we like the maverick in residence as a concept so much. It creates the necessary dialogue to improve your organisation.

Idea meritocracy

The book uses Bridgewater Associates. Headquartered in a Connecticut as an example. Its philosophy is outlined in a set of over two hundred principles written by the founder. In a typical organisation, people are punished for raising dissent. At Bridge-water, they’re evaluated on whether they speak up—and they can be fired for failing to challenge the status quo.

In hiring, instead of using similarity to gauge cultural fit, Bridgewater assesses cultural contribution. It wants people who will think independently and enrich the culture. By holding them accountable for dissenting, Dalio has fundamentally altered the way people make decisions. The goal is to create an idea meritocracy, where the best ideas win.

You need get angry

If you want people to modify their behaviour, you need to highlight costs of not changing. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss. Once commitment is fortified, instead of glancing in the rearview mirror, it’s better to look forward by highlighting the work left to be done.

When we’re determined to reach an objective, it’s the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us. Anger counteracts apathy: We feel that we’ve been wronged, and we’re compelled to fight.

Other tips:

don’t take too much risk
don’t believe in first mover advantage
work hard
quantity over quality
have a vision
Be old

I am fifty years old. The best news from the book was that there is evidence that older employees tend to submit more ideas and higher-quality ideas than their younger colleagues, with the most valuable suggestions coming from employees older than fifty-five.

Talent Management
Creativity Skills
Innovation Management

“Originals” makes a persuasive case for being a non-conformist. Numerous examples, backed by scientific research, illustrate which type of individuals and specific characteristics that are most likely to rock the normative boat. The narrative is engaging and flows easily. Recommended most especially for professionals as well as parents.

I want to like Adam Grant.

In a shorter medium (blogs and articles in places like HBR), he has written some smart things, and he has worked professionally with people I like.

His books seem to miss the mark though. His first, Give and Take, had some interesting ideas in it. It is just that Grant seems to have this thought where he should be publishing on a big idea. Therefore, in that first book, he created a trichotomy where people fit in one of three categories professionally – you were either a giver, a taker, or a matcher. The key was to be the giver. However, there was a weird caveat that it was not all givers. I liked the book well enough that I remember that taxonomy that he drew, but it felt like a letdown because it relied too heavily on a few examples.

It is as if he does take that big idea he wants to talk about, finds the examples, and then uses them as a highlight. Maybe it is a narrative thing he’s doing (he does call himself a social scientist in this book more than once), trying to use examples to tell a better story because data is not as fun to read on the train, I don’t know. But he makes the same choices in Originals as he did in Give and Take.

Therefore, that lead me, as I was reading, to try to think of this book and how I would describe it. In one sense, it does feel like it is pointed towards some self-satisfied liberal elite establishment pseudo-intellectual thing. I mean, look at the blurbs. Sheryl Sandberg helped edit it as per the acknowledgements, and she wrote the forward. It is blurbed by Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Branson, Ariana Huffington, and Peter Thiel, to show you what the intended audience is. For what it’s worth, it feels like an extended TED talk. For me, that is not a charitable comparison, but it may appeal to some people.

All this is not to say that there is not valuable information and insights embedded in the book. There is a part about Martin Luther King prepping his famous “I have a Dream Speech”. There is an extended section on the birth of the women’s suffrage that brought to my attention an important figure in American history I was very unaware of. The problem is that these sections were used to illustrate the broader points that Grant was speaking on and it may not have been the best fit (the lessons were “procrastination can be useful” and then “build coalitions”). It is as if Grant is just pulling in the things that are interesting to him and trying to apply them to the larger idea that being original is good.

This of course is true. But for me the most troubling thing was that originality as looked at in the book was focused mostly on business success, with a side of politics. The only originality that Grant wrote of in the arts was in comedy – nothing about Duchamp or John Cage, but we learn how birth order may influence how often a baseball player steals a base. My guess is that art is just too far outside of Grant’s domain for him to write cogently on it, but it is a huge blind spot in a book about the importance of originality (No “Make it new” or worrying about the anxiety of influence). Nevertheless, perhaps that is just showing my domain preferences.

Full of quick, easy-to-read and easy to understand examples that challenge conceptions about innovation and change the way people will view their own habits and how business leaders will view potential candidates and the work environment. Not every example will pertain to each reader, but each reader can take something from Grant's book.

The path to becoming an original isn’t guaranteed. It’s a struggle, and without a map, the journey can be maddening. In Originals, Adam Grant does an excellent job of constructing that map for us. Through stories and carefully selected research, he presents us a map of the frontier territory where originality can be won.

Originals is packed with proof that anyone can break free from conformity. Malcolm Gladwell started down this road, but Grant takes us into uncharted territory. He delivers new, actionable insights and guides us towards well-reasoned points.

Grant’s work teaches us how to embrace paradox as we explore and endure the necessary trials required in becoming original. Through its pages, readers can uncover an operating system to become a monopoly of one.

Originals is a well-edited treatise to guide those who seek to break free from conformity and start the journey towards originality. It also, perhaps most importantly, provides us context and symbols to help enjoy that journey.

You can't ask for much more from a non-fiction book!

Adam Grant does an excellent job tearing down some of our most cherished ideas and myths about how to stand out and succeed. There is something in this book for everyone to LEARN and DO to become "Original". As a father of young children, I especially appreciate Grant's section on how to instill non-conformity in the next generation.

I am looking forward to reading Grant's other book, Give and Take.

About 2/3 of this is very interesting. Some of the same old, same old examples but it does get into birth order, parenting, and the processes that seem to grow non-conformists. However, towards the end of the book (audio) it goes on and on and on about social change, revolution etc. It's almost a manifesto about his ideas for changing the world with very little mention of "originals". I may have to find a print copy to better analyze the content but I find the latter one-fourth to one third to be off topic. That said, I found the early chapters quite interesting and would have rated this 3 and 1/2 stars if possible.

This book has and will continue to shape the way I think, behave, create and interact. By far the best book I have read in the last three years. It should be required reading in higher business education.

Materialized in the form of data and words for something I feel like I have had a vague feelings of. It reaffirms my believe in innovation. But who knows, I might be the subject of conformation bias. Either way, I enjoyed reading this book.

I really like this book. Grant dismissed the idea that to be entrepeneur we must quit our daily jobs; the idea that if you dont like your job you should leave no matter what; he presents new concepts that are actually more close to the reality. For someone who is looking for learning and creating new ideas this book is an excellent guide to do it.

Many of the concepts espoused in this book ran counter to the common wisdom. Yet, the author Adam Grant was able to clearly set out the logic and research behind the concepts. One example was the idea that procrastination has its benefits that I never even thought of.Wonderful and fascinating, this book has full of innovative ideas.

I enjoyed the pace of the book and the presentation of ideas. I read a lot of nonfiction and often the voice and tone of the writer begin to get repetitive-- not in this case! This one will be worth rereading again.

Adam Grant takes a page from Malcolm Gladwell by sharing insights that you make go "hmm" through a series of anecdotes.

Do be have a critical eye when reading. Grant knows the influential power of numbers, and in some instances, he carelessly crunches back-of-the-envelope numbers to prove a point. Some of the numbers don't make sense, or don't prove his point -- so do be careful.

If you seek actionable insights about exactly how to innovate, with others, and recognize the sometimes unexpected ways we get in our own way, this this book is packed with research-backed methods and apt, captivating examples. For example, want to successfully champion ideas and apt collective action with others at work and home? Begin by taking his15-question quiz: [...]
• What is a proven way to efficiently involve all employees suggesting and selecting what innovations are most beneficial to implement?
Hint: Eyewear retailer, Warby Parker used this approach in a way that was transparent to all employees, and used a voting process that enabled technology teams to overrule managers at times to work on an idea to prove its value. That way, “They don’t wait for permission to start building something”, applied psychology expert Reb Rebele, told Adam Grant. “But they gather feedback from peers before rolling things out to peers and customers.” See pages 57 to 59.
• What collective method of rethinking how to proceed on a project can often avoid a failure and sometimes spur a greater success?
Hint: Rob Minkoff, the director of The Lion King, and Maureen Donley, a producer, serendipitously experienced that method and were then able to rewrite the storyline, turning the movie into the highest-grossing film of 1994, winning two Oscars and a Golden Globe. Stanford creativity expert, Justin Berg, explained to Adam Grant how that illuminating interaction saved the movie. See page 135.
• What is the key value/behavior, often missed, when leaders want their employees to be intensely committed to a shared set of values and norms? Hint: The Bay of Pigs debacle reflects the damage that can happen without that trait. See page 190.
• What is the first error that companies make when trying to institute major changes according to Harvard professor John Kotter? Hint: Executives underestimate how hard it can be to drive people out o their comfort zones. See page 232.
• If you want people to modify their behavior is it better to highlight the benefits of their changing or the costs of not changing? Hint: It depends on whether they perceive the new behavior as safe or risky according to Peter Salovey, “one of the originators of the concept of emotional intelligence, and now president of Yale.” Read pages 233 to 236.
Related insights once you learn how to be more original and thus more valuable:
• Practice The Exposure Effect: offer multiple, short exposures to your idea, mixed in with other ideas, with pauses in between those exposures to spur others’ acceptance of your new idea.
• See how former deputy director of intelligence at the CIA, Carmen Medina, as she got promoted, faced the wall of the “middle-status conformity” effect. See pages 77 to 84.

This book has what you would expect: both general and specific defenses of the need for greater creativity in the work place and life in general. It also contains what one wouldn't: including some important myth busting statistics regarding what does and doesn't constitute greater creativity and what to do about it. What I appreciate most about the book is the specific advice it contains. What disappointed me is that I wished it was longer and packed full of more statistics and research, though I imagine Prof. Grant may have deliberately avoided doing so.

A collection of how to's in generating or developing innovative
Ideas. Some are based on good management practices
and others based on psychological/behavior
Studies. I think the last chapter is a good recap of the essence of this book. I would recommend reading the last chapter first, then
Go back to gain more detailed explanation where necessary.

This is an interesting non-fiction book about developing creativity and how certain creative individuals have changed the world. Much of it is about corporations but the second half is more about ways in which to get creative ideas accepted by others and encouraging creativity. As I was reading, some things really caught me interest and I wish I had a pen and paper to take some notes. There were some parts that bored me which I skipped. I was happy to find that at the end is a nice summary of the key points that interested me most! I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I finished the book much sooner than expected because so many of the last pages are references.

No doubt the book will be great - sounds like it describes me to a t... That said, has anybody else noticed how the price of hardbacks has ramped up hugely and now the price of a kindle version (which should really be no more than $6 EVER) is now the price of a hardback a few years ago. It's an e-book...wth are we paying this much money for?

This is a book I'll revisit more than once. Full of inspiring psychological insights that remind me why poking the status quo is always appropriate.

From the story of Warby Parker's founders to the psychology of peaceful revolutions, I was enthralled from beginning to end.

It didn't hurt that I've always been seen, by myself and others, as a non-conformist. Nothing like a little reinforcement of my self-actualization​ rationale.

There are some kinds of books you take your time to read. You linger at a paragraph, think about a sentence, read on, then close the book and think again... with a smile of contentment hanging from the corners of your lips. These are the kinds of moments book-readers crave, and "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move The World" by Adam Grant is a book that gave me lots of those moments.

"Originals" is a book that examines creativity, the psychology behind great art and inventions, the relationship between age and creativity, and similar topics. For example, when discussing what differentiates great creative geniuses from their counterparts, the author concludes that a lot of great creative geniuses maintain a larger body of work than their lesser peers. In almost every field of art, science and technology, people who have accomplished great things do more projects than most of their fellow workers. The author writes:

'...on average, creative geniuses were not qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality.'

Shakespeare produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets, yet we know him for just a handful of plays like Macbeth, The Merchant of the Vernice, Othello, and a few others. Meanwhile plays like All's Well That Ends Well and Timothy Of Athens are comparatively poorer works and very few people reckon with them. Picasso's body of work includes "...1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries," yet only a few of these works are considered truly great. We all know Einstein for his theory of relativity, but he wrote more than 200 other papers that had little or no effect on the scientific world. The lesson here is: if you want to increase your odds of producing a great idea, make sure you create lots of ideas.

Also, "Originals" debunks the theory that creativity declines with age. The author says this depends on an individual's style of thinking. On one side are conceptual thinkers and on the other side are experimental thinkers. Conceptual thinkers operate through the help of sudden bolts of inspiration. While experimental thinking involves working or feeling your way through a solution. The author explains that "... conceptual innovators are sprinters, and experimental innovators are marathoners."

"Originals" states that it is better to adopt an experimental type of thinking' to have a better chance of maintaining or increasing your level of creativity at an old age. He writes:

'...to sustain our originality as we age and accumulate expertise, our best bet is to adopt an experimental approach. We can make fewer plans in advance for what we want to create, and start testing our different kinds of tentative ideas and solutions. Eventually, if we're patient enough, we may stumble onto something that's novel and useful.
'The experimental approach served Leonarda da Vinci well: he was forty-six when he finished painting The Last Supper and in his early fifties when he started working on the Mona Lisa. "Only by drawing did he truly come to understand, was his vision clarified," one scholar wrote; another observed that "Leonardo works like a sculptor modelling in clay who never accepts any form as final but goes on creating, even at the risk of obscuring his original intentions."'

"Originals" is full of counterintuitive ideas and theories on life and creativity. It reads smoothly and the depth of its analysis gives the book a high rereading value. For those interested in the nature of life and creativity, this is a great reference book.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House for review copy.

As soon as I started reading this book, I knew it was something special. The combination of anecdotal storytelling makes for a blistering read, but the real value is in the scientific research that backs up each of the points that Adam Grant so articulately conveys. This book is an instant classic, and something I'll be gifting onwards to many, many others. Pick it up and I promise you'll be telling countless others that this is the MUST READ OF 2016.

A deeply insightful and inspiring book. Grant presents research that demystifies what it's like to spearhead an original idea–showing that anybody could change the world. His book is motivating and educational at the same time. Grant has a magical ability to weave primary & secondary research with empirical anecdotes, seamlessly to present his ideas and take the reader on a journey. This book is well worth your time.

Adam Grant takes a page from Malcolm Gladwell by sharing insights that you make go "hmm" through a series of anecdotes.

Do be have a critical eye when reading. Grant knows the influential power of numbers, and in some instances, he carelessly crunches back-of-the-envelope numbers to prove a point. Some of the numbers don't make sense, or don't prove his point -- so do be careful.

If you seek actionable insights about exactly how to innovate, with others, and recognize the sometimes unexpected ways we get in our own way, this this book is packed with research-backed methods and apt, captivating examples. For example, want to successfully champion ideas and apt collective action with others at work and home? Begin by taking his15-question quiz: [...]
• What is a proven way to efficiently involve all employees suggesting and selecting what innovations are most beneficial to implement?
Hint: Eyewear retailer, Warby Parker used this approach in a way that was transparent to all employees, and used a voting process that enabled technology teams to overrule managers at times to work on an idea to prove its value. That way, “They don’t wait for permission to start building something”, applied psychology expert Reb Rebele, told Adam Grant. “But they gather feedback from peers before rolling things out to peers and customers.” See pages 57 to 59.
• What collective method of rethinking how to proceed on a project can often avoid a failure and sometimes spur a greater success?
Hint: Rob Minkoff, the director of The Lion King, and Maureen Donley, a producer, serendipitously experienced that method and were then able to rewrite the storyline, turning the movie into the highest-grossing film of 1994, winning two Oscars and a Golden Globe. Stanford creativity expert, Justin Berg, explained to Adam Grant how that illuminating interaction saved the movie. See page 135.
• What is the key value/behavior, often missed, when leaders want their employees to be intensely committed to a shared set of values and norms? Hint: The Bay of Pigs debacle reflects the damage that can happen without that trait. See page 190.
• What is the first error that companies make when trying to institute major changes according to Harvard professor John Kotter? Hint: Executives underestimate how hard it can be to drive people out o their comfort zones. See page 232.
• If you want people to modify their behavior is it better to highlight the benefits of their changing or the costs of not changing? Hint: It depends on whether they perceive the new behavior as safe or risky according to Peter Salovey, “one of the originators of the concept of emotional intelligence, and now president of Yale.” Read pages 233 to 236.
Related insights once you learn how to be more original and thus more valuable:
• Practice The Exposure Effect: offer multiple, short exposures to your idea, mixed in with other ideas, with pauses in between those exposures to spur others’ acceptance of your new idea.
• See how former deputy director of intelligence at the CIA, Carmen Medina, as she got promoted, faced the wall of the “middle-status conformity” effect. See pages 77 to 84.

This book has what you would expect: both general and specific defenses of the need for greater creativity in the work place and life in general. It also contains what one wouldn't: including some important myth busting statistics regarding what does and doesn't constitute greater creativity and what to do about it. What I appreciate most about the book is the specific advice it contains. What disappointed me is that I wished it was longer and packed full of more statistics and research, though I imagine Prof. Grant may have deliberately avoided doing so.

A collection of how to's in generating or developing innovative
Ideas. Some are based on good management practices
and others based on psychological/behavior
Studies. I think the last chapter is a good recap of the essence of this book. I would recommend reading the last chapter first, then
Go back to gain more detailed explanation where necessary.

This is an interesting non-fiction book about developing creativity and how certain creative individuals have changed the world. Much of it is about corporations but the second half is more about ways in which to get creative ideas accepted by others and encouraging creativity. As I was reading, some things really caught me interest and I wish I had a pen and paper to take some notes. There were some parts that bored me which I skipped. I was happy to find that at the end is a nice summary of the key points that interested me most! I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I finished the book much sooner than expected because so many of the last pages are references.

No doubt the book will be great - sounds like it describes me to a t... That said, has anybody else noticed how the price of hardbacks has ramped up hugely and now the price of a kindle version (which should really be no more than $6 EVER) is now the price of a hardback a few years ago. It's an e-book...wth are we paying this much money for?

This is a book I'll revisit more than once. Full of inspiring psychological insights that remind me why poking the status quo is always appropriate.

From the story of Warby Parker's founders to the psychology of peaceful revolutions, I was enthralled from beginning to end.

It didn't hurt that I've always been seen, by myself and others, as a non-conformist. Nothing like a little reinforcement of my self-actualization​ rationale.

There are some kinds of books you take your time to read. You linger at a paragraph, think about a sentence, read on, then close the book and think again... with a smile of contentment hanging from the corners of your lips. These are the kinds of moments book-readers crave, and "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move The World" by Adam Grant is a book that gave me lots of those moments.

"Originals" is a book that examines creativity, the psychology behind great art and inventions, the relationship between age and creativity, and similar topics. For example, when discussing what differentiates great creative geniuses from their counterparts, the author concludes that a lot of great creative geniuses maintain a larger body of work than their lesser peers. In almost every field of art, science and technology, people who have accomplished great things do more projects than most of their fellow workers. The author writes:

'...on average, creative geniuses were not qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality.'

Shakespeare produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets, yet we know him for just a handful of plays like Macbeth, The Merchant of the Vernice, Othello, and a few others. Meanwhile plays like All's Well That Ends Well and Timothy Of Athens are comparatively poorer works and very few people reckon with them. Picasso's body of work includes "...1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries," yet only a few of these works are considered truly great. We all know Einstein for his theory of relativity, but he wrote more than 200 other papers that had little or no effect on the scientific world. The lesson here is: if you want to increase your odds of producing a great idea, make sure you create lots of ideas.

Also, "Originals" debunks the theory that creativity declines with age. The author says this depends on an individual's style of thinking. On one side are conceptual thinkers and on the other side are experimental thinkers. Conceptual thinkers operate through the help of sudden bolts of inspiration. While experimental thinking involves working or feeling your way through a solution. The author explains that "... conceptual innovators are sprinters, and experimental innovators are marathoners."

"Originals" states that it is better to adopt an experimental type of thinking' to have a better chance of maintaining or increasing your level of creativity at an old age. He writes:

'...to sustain our originality as we age and accumulate expertise, our best bet is to adopt an experimental approach. We can make fewer plans in advance for what we want to create, and start testing our different kinds of tentative ideas and solutions. Eventually, if we're patient enough, we may stumble onto something that's novel and useful.
'The experimental approach served Leonarda da Vinci well: he was forty-six when he finished painting The Last Supper and in his early fifties when he started working on the Mona Lisa. "Only by drawing did he truly come to understand, was his vision clarified," one scholar wrote; another observed that "Leonardo works like a sculptor modelling in clay who never accepts any form as final but goes on creating, even at the risk of obscuring his original intentions."'

"Originals" is full of counterintuitive ideas and theories on life and creativity. It reads smoothly and the depth of its analysis gives the book a high rereading value. For those interested in the nature of life and creativity, this is a great reference book.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House for review copy.

As soon as I started reading this book, I knew it was something special. The combination of anecdotal storytelling makes for a blistering read, but the real value is in the scientific research that backs up each of the points that Adam Grant so articulately conveys. This book is an instant classic, and something I'll be gifting onwards to many, many others. Pick it up and I promise you'll be telling countless others that this is the MUST READ OF 2016.

A deeply insightful and inspiring book. Grant presents research that demystifies what it's like to spearhead an original idea–showing that anybody could change the world. His book is motivating and educational at the same time. Grant has a magical ability to weave primary & secondary research with empirical anecdotes, seamlessly to present his ideas and take the reader on a journey. This book is well worth your time.

Only a few chapters into this book on Audible, but absolutely loving it so far. This is a great book on creativity, filled with inspiring and insightful stories, but also backed up by lots of research.

The author basically tell you not to take the known path of financial success (e.g. becoming a Doctor) and instead of doing something ''original'' (and end up starving and homeless). All of this of course, while the author is sitting in his guaranteed job in Academia. What a joke.

What this Academia author fail to understand, is that ''originality'' is a myth. All there is, is incremental improvements made by thousands of people, and then, those thousands of incremental improvements lead to new insights (i.e. something new aka original).

Book is a massive waste of time.

This book came highly recommended; however, it proved to be such a complete disappointment to me that I quit reading it after one chapter pranked this reader about current literature. Oh, is that a spoiler?!