The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant

TED Talks Daily

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2019

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies "originals": thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals -- including embracing failure. "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most," Grant says. "You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily. This talk features
0:06.4	organizational psychologist Adam Grant, recorded live at TED, 2016. Adam is also the host of Ted's
0:14.2	podcast, Work Life, back for a second season. In each episode, Adam takes you inside the minds of some of the world's most
0:21.8	unusual professionals to discover the science of making work not suck. Listen to work life with
0:28.3	Adam Grant wherever you get your podcasts. Seven years ago, a student came to me and asked me to invest
0:36.3	in his company.
0:42.2	He said, I'm working with three friends, and we're going to try to disrupt an industry by selling stuff online. And I said, okay, you guys spent the whole summer on this, right? No, we all
0:47.2	took internships, just in case it doesn't work out. All right, but you're going to go in full-time
0:51.7	once you graduate. Not exactly. We've all lined up backup jobs.
0:57.7	Six months go by. It's the day before the company launches,
1:00.9	and there is still not a functioning website.
1:03.5	You guys realize the entire company is a website.
1:05.8	That's literally all it is.
1:08.8	So I obviously declined to invest.
1:11.6	And they ended up naming the company Warby Parker.
1:15.6	They sell glasses online.
1:18.6	They were recently recognized as the world's most innovative company
1:22.6	and valued at over a billion dollars.
1:25.6	And now, my wife handles are investments. Why was I so wrong?
1:33.1	To find out, I've been studying people that I come to call originals. Originals are nonconformists,
1:39.2	people who not only have new ideas, but take action to champion them. They're people who stand out and speak up.
1:46.0	Originals drive creativity and change in the world.
	...

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