Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

By Adam Grant

Creative Destruction

The Risky Business of Going Against the Grain

“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.” - George Bernard Shaw

• 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
• Originality itself starts with creativity: generating a concept that is both novel and useful. But it doesn’t stop there. Originals are people who take the initiative to make their visions a reality.
• Finding the Faults in Defaults
• Customer service agents (Firefox, chrome vs internet explorer, safari): Firefox and chrome employees remained in their jobs 15 percent longer, 19 percent less likely to miss work, same customer satisfaction levels in 30 less days.
  • Difference was in how they obtained the browser (built in or download)
  • The agents who accepted the defaults of internet Explorer and Safari approached their job the same way. They stayed on script ion sales calls and followed standard operating procedures for handling customer complaints. They saw their job descriptions as fixed, so when they were unhappy with their work, they started missing days, and eventually just quit.
  • The employees who took the initiative to change their browsers approached their jobs differently. They looked for novel ways of selling to customers and addressing their concerns. When they encountered a situation they didn’t like, they fixed it. Having taken the initiative to improve their circumstances, they had little reason to leave. They created the jobs they wanted.
• We live in an Internet Explorer world. Just as almost two thirds of the customer service reps used the default browser on their computers, many of us accept the defaults in our own lives.
• John Jost studies - found that disadvantaged groups consistently support the status quo more than advantaged groups. “People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.”
• Presidential election (Bush v Gore) - regardless of political ideologies, when a candidate seemed destined to win, people liked him more. When his odds dropped, they liked him less.
• Creativity starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place. We’re driven to question defaults when we experience vuja de, the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we’ve seen it before. Vuja de is the reverse - we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems.
• Warby Parker story
• The Two Faces of Ambition
• May think of child prodigies as the ones to make a dent in the universe - however they rarely go on to change the world.
  • May associate it with not having street smarts, but less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems.
  • What holds them back from moving the world forward is that they don’t learn to be original.
• Declaration of Independence, MLK, Michelangelo, Copernicus, Wozniak examples. We can only imagine how many people never pursued, publicized, or promoted their original ideas because they were not dragged or catapulted into the spotlight.
• We all have ideas for improving our workplaces, schools, and communities. Sadly, many of us hesitate to take action to promote these ideas.
• Joseph Schumpeter - originality is an act of creative destruction.