the-originals
Best Thing: Reviewers often praise the book for its insightful exploration of originality and creativity, highlighting how successful entrepreneurs balance risk with stability. The practical advice on fostering an open environment for idea generation is particularly well-received. Worst Thing: Critics sometimes point out that the book can be overly theoretical and lacks concrete examples or actionable steps, making it challenging for some readers to apply its concepts in real-world scenarios.
Key Insights
- Originals are not big risk-takers — they hedge everything except the one bet that matters. Contrary to the mythology, most successful entrepreneurs and innovators maintain stability in most domains, which frees them to take concentrated risk in one. Most keep day jobs while founding companies. Grant’s finding: entrepreneurs are more risk-averse than the general population on average — they just structure their exposure differently.
- Idea selection is harder than idea generation. Coming up with original ideas is relatively easy. Evaluating which ones are worth pursuing is where most people fail — including creators themselves, who are poor judges of their own work. The implication: seek external calibration, especially from people who share your domain but have no personal stake in the idea.
- Don’t assign devil’s advocates — unearth genuine dissenters. Assigned devil’s advocates perform skepticism without believing it, which gives the team a false sense of having stress-tested the idea. What actually improves decisions is finding people who genuinely hold the dissenting view. “Canaries” — a rotating cast of frank-minded people you proactively consult on new initiatives — give you honest signal before you’re committed.
- Character framing over behavior framing changes outcomes. “Don’t be a cheater” works better than “don’t cheat.” “Don’t be a drunk driver” works better than “don’t drink and drive.” Grant’s synthesis of the research: appeals to identity and character are more durable than behavioral instructions because they activate a different level of self-concept.
- Collective wisdom requires independence. Group forecasts and decisions only improve on individual ones when each person’s judgment is formed independently before being aggregated. Once people hear each other’s views, their judgments converge toward shared error rather than canceling out individual errors. The design implication: structure group processes to preserve independence before pooling.
— Drafted from external sources; review and edit to make your own.
From earlier notes:
- Most successful originals and entrepreneurs aren’t actually big risk takers. They have stability and security and caution in all areas, which frees them to be very risky and original in one area
- Most keep day jobs while founding, etc
- Taking the risk out of risky seeming ventures
- Entrepreneurs are more risk averse than general population, though they do have history of rebellion in teen years, etc
- Coming up with ideas is easy, selecting them well is harder
- Openness leads to creativity leads to original ideas
- Power and status are different. Plant doubt or critiques to make people allies instead of arguers/sales
- Parents who explain why something was wrong (rather than punish), and have few rules, and ask questions to let children choose their own values
- Phrase things around character rather than behavior. ‘Don’t be a drunk driver’
- Don’t assign devils advocates. Unearth them
- Not about cultural fit. About people who share values and improve culture (respect with diversity)
- Nothing to fear from the truth
- Strong opinions, weekly held
- ‘canaries’ - rotating cast of ppl who speak their mind that you can get input from on new things
- Reframe gains as losses, establish burning platform
- Collective wisdom only works if each person is independent, which doesn’t work if opinions are degraded by others opinions rather than fact