Originals – Adam Grant

How non-conformists move the world.

original, adj The origin or source of something; from which something springs, proceeds, or is derived.

original, n A thing of singular or unique character; a person who is different from other people in an appealing or interesting way; a person of fresh initiative or inventive capacity.

Notes:

• Creative Destruction
  • There are two routes to achievement: conformity and originality.
  • Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo.
  • Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.
  • Many of us accept the defaults in our own lives.
  • The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists.
  • The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place.
  • When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people.
  • Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.
  • To be an original, you need to take radical risks.
  • The entrepreneurs who hedged their bets by starting their companies while still working were far more risk averse and unsure of themselves.
  • If you’re risk averse and have some doubts about the feasibility of your ideas, it’s likely that your business will be built to last.
  • Risk portfolios explain why people often become original in one part of their lives while remaining quite conventional in others.
  • Successful originals take extreme risks in one arena and offset them with extreme caution in another.
  • Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a free choice.
• Blind Inventors and One-Eyed Investors
  • The biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation — it’s idea selection.
  • Overconfidence may be a particularly difficult bias to overcome in the creative domain.
  • When we’ve developed an idea, we’re typically too close to our own tastes — and too far from the audience’s taste — to evaluate it accurately.
  • On average, creative geniuses weren’t 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.
  • Conviction in our ideas is dangerous not only because it leaves us vulnerable to false positives, but also because it stops us from generating the requisite variety to reach our creative potential.
  • 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.
  • Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience.
  • Intuitions are only trustworthy when people build up experience making judgments in a predictable environment.
  • The more intuitive investors were, the greater their odds of being swayed by an entrepreneur’s passion.
• Out on a Limb
  • How we can all reduce the risks of speaking up — and gain the potential benefits of doing so.
  • Accentuating the flaws in your idea
    • It disarms the audience
    • It makes you look smart
    • It makes you more trustworthy
    • It leaves audiences with a more favorable assessment of the idea itself, due to a bias in how we process information.
  • We often under-communicate our ideas. We need to speak up about them, then rinse and repeat.
  • The mere exposure effect: the more often we encounter something, the more we like it.
  • Exposures are more effective when they’re short and mixed in with other ideas, to help maintain the audience’s curiosity.
  • Four different options for handling a dissatisfying situation: exit, voice, persistence, and neglect.
  • In the quest for originality, neglect isn’t an option. Persistence is a temporary route to earning the right to speak up. But in the long run, like neglect, persistence maintains the status quo and falls short of resolving your dissatisfaction. To change the situation, exit and voice are the only viable alternatives.
  • The mistakes we regret are not errors of commission, but errors of omission.
• Fools Rush In
  • You don’t have to be first to be an original, and the most successful originals don’t always arrive on schedule.
  • When you put off a task, you buy yourself time to engage in divergent thinking rather than foreclosing on one particular idea.
  • Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity.
  • Procrastination keeps us open to improvisation.
  • Great originals are great procrastinators, but they don’t skip planning altogether.
  • Pioneers and settlers
    • When originals rush to be pioneers, they’re prone to overstep.
    • The kinds of people who choose to be late movers may be better suited to succeed.
    • Along with being less recklessly ambitious, settlers can improve upon competitor’s technology to make products better.
    • Whereas pioneers tend to get stuck in their early offerings, settlers can observe market changes and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly.
  • Two radically different styles of innovation: conceptual and experimental.
    • Conceptual innovators formulate a big idea and set out to execute it.
    • Experimental innovators solve problems through trial and error, learning and evolving as they go along.
    • Conceptual innovators tend to generate original ideas early but risk copying themselves. The experimental approach takes longer, but proves more renewable: instead of reproducing our past ideas, experiments enable us to continue discovering new ones.
    • To sustain our originality as we age and accumulate expertise, our best bet is to adopt an experimental approach.
• Goldilocks and the Trojan Horse
  • Goldilocks theory of coalition formation
  • Horizontal hostility: Radical groups often disparage more mainstream groups as impostors and sellouts.
  • In seeking alliances with groups that share our values, we overlook the importance of sharing our strategic tactics.
  • To succeed, originals must often become tempered radicals. They believe in values that depart from traditions and ideas that go against the grain, yet they learn to tone down their radicalism by presenting their beliefs and ideas in ways that are less shocking and more appealing to mainstream audiences.
  • To form alliances, originals can temper their radicalism by smuggling their real vision inside a Trojan horse.
  • The most promising ideas begin from novelty and then add familiarity.
• Rebel with a Cause
  • To become original, we have to be willing to take some risks.
  • When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks.
• Rethinking Groupthink
  • Groupthink – The tendency to seek consensus instead of fostering dissent
  • Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong.
  • Getting problems noted is half the battle against groupthink; the other is listening to the right opinions about how to solve them.
• Rocking the Boat and Keeping It Steady
  • Choosing to challenge the status quo is an uphill battle, and there are bound to be failures, barriers, and setbacks along the way.
  • Defensive pessimism is a valuable resource when commitment to the task is steadfast. But when commitment flutters, anxiety and doubt can backfire.
  • Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.
  • The easiest way to encourage non-conformity is to introduce a single dissenter.
  • If you want people to take risks, you need first to show what’s wrong with the present.
• Actions for Impact (“Book Summary”)
  • Individual Actions:
    • Generating and Recognizing Original Ideas
      • Question the default
      • Triple the number of ideas you generate
      • Immerse yourself in a new domain
      • Procrastinate strategically
      • Seek more feedback from peers.
    • Voicing and Championing Original Ideas
      • Balance your risk portfolio
      • Highlight the reasons not to support your idea
      • Make your ideas more familiar
      • Speak to a different audience
      • Be a tempered radical
    • Managing Emotions
      • Motivate yourself differently when you’re committed vs. uncertain
      • Don’t try to calm down
      • Focus on the victim, not the perpetrator
      • Realize you’re not alone
      • Remember that if you don’t take initiative, the status quo will persist
  • Leader Actions:
    • Sparking Original Ideas
      • Run an innovation tournament
      • Picture yourself as the enemy
      • Invite employees from different functions and levels to pitch ideas
      • Hold an opposite day
      • Ban the words like, love, and hate
    • Building Cultures of Originality
      • Hire not on cultural fit, but on cultural contribution
      • Shift from exit interviews to entry interviews
      • Ask for problems, not solutions
      • Stop assigning devil’s advocates and start unearthing them
      • Welcome criticism
  • Parent and Teacher Actions:
    • Ask children what their role models would do
    • Link good behaviors to moral character
    • Explain how bad behaviors have consequences for others
    • Emphasize values over rules
    • Create novel niches for children to pursue