Book Review: Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016)

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016) by Adam Grant

Referencing research and many studies, best-selling author Adam Grant explores what it takes to be creative, innovative and champion new ideas. In Originals, Grant not only offers stories of great accomplishments but also dissects exactly how these accomplishments were achieved. He debunks the idea that originals are great risk-takers. Most of America’s founding fathers were reluctant revolutionaries. Martin Luther King writes that he was pushed into service as leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott before he had a chance to say “no.” Bill Gates eventually dropped out of college but only after first securing a leave of absence from the university and ensuring that his parents would support him. Originals, Grant argues, “are more risk-mitigators than risk-takers.” They are not the firsts to think about change or idea, Grant said, “Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.”

Grant also emphasizes that originals are not only successful because they are creative and nonconformist but because they also turn their ideas and their dreams into reality. They find a way to overcome resistance to change, sometimes through counterintuitive strategies. This enlightening 335-page book includes the following eight chapters:

#0 Foreword by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

#1 Creative Destruction

#2 Blind Inventors and One-Eyed Investors

#3 Out on a Limb

#4 Fools Rush In

#5 Goldilocks and the Trojan Horse

#6 Rebel with a Cause

#7 Rethinking Groupthink

#8 Rocking the Boat and Keeping It Steady

I like this book, simple and exciting :) Although, I think that this book is too US… too Americans… But nevertheless, fully recommended!

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.