Adam Grant

How Non-Conformists Move the World

Originals

Sheryl Sandberg

Adam M. Grant

The #1 New York Times bestseller that examines how people can champion new ideas-and how leaders can fight groupthink, from the author of Give and Take and co-author of Option B"Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world."--Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and The Tipping Point"Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful ideas. It will not only change the way you see the worl.

How Non-conformists Move the World

Kevin Wammer

Mediocre, although pleasantly written book. The anecdotes are fun to read, but nothing struck me as surprising enough to highlight. (This is the type of book I tend to review by the amounts of highlights I made: a lot of highlights, good book. A few highlights, not so good book.) Also, I ended up skipping a whole bunch of chapters. Meh!

Hannah Yang

interesting enough to read overall as it is filled with stories about notable individuals, but i'm unconvinced that these cases are really generalizable, or that applying these principles will really lead to originality. the most practically applicable aspect of this book comes as the last 10 pages, 'actions for impact,' which summarizes the takeaways of the rest of the book.

Sarah Schumacher

I felt like I’d already read all the stories and scientists and bits of advice in their respective books, so it felt like a compilation of a lot of the best research around... decision making? At the end of the day, I’m a bit lost on how the theme of originality pulls through all the seemingly unrelated stories. It felt more like a book about ‘unconventional wisdom based on the latest research.’ But only unconventional if you don’t read a massive quantity of books in this category.

All that being said, I took notes and could have taken more, so I definitely learned quite a few practical strategies. While I enjoyed reading this, I was constantly tempted to start a different unread book from the 15 waiting on my bookshelf.

Ali Angco

Felipe Saldarriaga 

Este año ha sido de libros con muchas luces para esta etapa de mi vida, uno se va dando cuenta de que lo hace a uno ser "el bicho raro" es realmente lo que nos hace "Originales", leer los casos que tiene el libro permite validar experiencias que uno va teniendo a lo largo de la vida. ciertamente no hay una fórmula perfecta para ser exitoso siendo original pero eso no deja de ser inspirador en nuestro desarrollo.

Maddie

This book provides lots of helpful advice on creating more original ideas and breaking free from groupthink. Using numerous studies to illustrate his points, Adam Grant does an excellent job of demonstrating how to champion your ideas, get people to support them and stay motivated.

This book was recommended by a very talented friend, but it took 2 years to start reading this piece. At first, the title seemed too magical, but I liked how the author deconstructed what it is like to be an Original person. For each chapter, he talks about the story of a successful person mixed and supported by social researches by his and other brilliant researchers' experiments. Even though all the concepts behind his ideas made sense to me, I think it is really difficult to unpack the idea of all Originals (aka innovative and successful people) into a 200 pages book.

Ahmed Salem

This is the first book to bring to sight, that real Original people are not gamblers or risk addicts.

This is one of Adam Grant's better books.  Very insightful and intriguing.

Benjamin Harrison

Yulianna Aparicio

Not worth reading cover to cover. The key points can be easily Googled, I'm sure.

Nadine 

Some interesting takeaways from this particularly on investing and teams. A lot of it completely only North American applicable - can see the management style and values / principles of Bridgewater ending in tears if they were applied in Asia.

"Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can fight groupthink to build cultures that welcome dissent"--

Omar

This book is filled with practical advice about how to think differently, challenge the status quo, and create the right environment to innovate. I found it to be remarkably insightful. Often I would think that I knew what was coming, but Adam Grant would just change the game by revealing some unexpected way to yield better results. 

Helpful for those interested in innovation and originality, how to sell those ideas, get the right feedback to improve them, etc.

Kingston Breton

Well written and actionable. 

This was a good one. Quick read at 254 pages it was packed with great insights and supports for Grants analysis

Joshua Line

Yet another gleaning of work performed by other people. You're better off reading the original work/research. Use it for the citations, if anything.

Erifili G

A super useful book with a lot of actionable advice! Especially if you're into business/entrepreneurship, this should be a must-read. I've genuinely never highlighted more in a book before.

Ilia Markov

I'd need to give it another read to be able to understand it better

Les Reynolds

Some parts were very interesting, some good ideas overall.

Michael Hessling

So-so. The whole book felt contradictory. "You should do this, unless that, then you should do those." Some good stories (anecdotes?). I appreciated the bit on how venting anger doesn't work, as well as the bit on revolutions. It took me a while to get through it, though--maybe I just don't like reading nonfiction any more.

Artas Bartas

I feel wary of reading yet another book on being creative/changing the world, so it was only after a close friend of mine was feeding me random insights from Adam Grant's book for nearly two months that I decided to give it a try. I was not disappointed. 

Adam Grant organizes the book around a wide range of diverse topics - from coping with the emotional fallout of a non-conformist behavior to raising conscientious kids and building effective political coalitions. As he guides the reader through the topic, he brings a multitude of stories to illustrate the argument and then follows up with the relevant research illustrating his point. 

Learning about the doubts that plagued entrepreneurs behind Warby Parker, the trials and tribulations of 19th century suffragists, and the business decisions that led to the demise of Polaroid, to name but a few examples Grant weaves into the larger story, debunks some popular myths and invites an occasional laugh.

The language of the book flows easily and makes for a quick reading. It's a type of a book one could easily recommend to high-school students or people still mastering English. And Viking, the publishing house behind the book, did a good job in structuring the book, so it's easy to find the relevant passage or follow up on the research underpinning some of the bigger claims Adam Grant makes.

Originals How Non-Conformists Move the World

Reviews