Book #14: Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

It's fitting that one of the quotes on the front of the book is from Malcolm Gladwell, because this book feels a lot like his. Grant uses different stories about people who have made decidedly original marks on the world to teach what common traits "Originals" have. He uses lots and lots of interesting studies to fill out the points he makes, which is fitting since he is an academic (I think?). So it definitely sounds like Gladwell and reminds me of his books (which I haven't read for a few years). Some of the stories that stood out to me: a finance company in CT that has a crazy-sounding CEO that demands that people share their dissenting opinions with him, the development of Warby Parker and how it seemed like their business would fail and why it didn't, stories about the development of Seinfeld and The Lion King and how both almost didn't get made. All of these stories were very interesting, and Grant was a good writer and made his points very well. I really enjoyed this read.

My main question after reading this is kind of simple-minded and probably shows how boring I really am. That is, how important is it that people are actually "original" or non-conformist anyway? Is this a quality we should be striving for or something? Obviously, creativity and originality are really important traits to have in the society at large, and it's really important that SOMEONE can innovate and find great new solutions to problems. But honestly, we don't all need to be creative or original. I don't think it would truly contribute to my overall happiness level or anything to be more creative. Most people don't really need those skills, to be honest. So to me, the points about how to implement the ideas in this book fall flat. But maybe I'm just a pessimist and this shows how truly un-original I am. (According to one of his chapters, birth order affects a lot of how rebellious or non-conformist you are, and the oldest is usually a rule-follower and people-pleaser. Younger/youngest children are usually more non-conformist. So maybe this is just because of my perfectionist oldest-child tendencies.)