Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Author: Adam Grant

Adam Grant is a highly celebrated professor from the Wharton School of Business where he has won the best teacher award for several years in succession. Sheryl Sandberg has written a glowing introduction to the book that highlights the huge impact that Adam has had in her personal life. I probably was expecting too much from the book from all of the hype that i had read, and I have to admit that it came a little short. However, it is still a great book that debunks some well held myths and preconceptions about entrepreneurs and creative minds.

There are numerous quotes that I have saved from the book and I am having a hard time deciding which ones to include in this review.  Let me start with a definition:  “the hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists”. This seemingly general quote is made in the context of users who reject the default browser on their computers and install Firefox or Chrome instead. Turns out that they do much better at work than those who accept the default browser on their system. IMHO this is a very low bar of originality, but an interesting finding nevertheless.

The book has tons of interesting anecdotes and original characters. One of which is Ray Dalio, the CEO of hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. He encourages employees of Bridgewater to be brutally honest and openly criticize each other. Adam writes that he “fires employees for failing to criticize him”. The goal is to avoid the trap of “groupthink” which kills originality. Dalio believes that a “thoughtful disagreement between experts creates an efficient marketplace of ideas, where the best on emerges over time”. While all of this makes for an interesting story, Adam stops short of endorsing any of this directly. 

Sometimes it comes down to allowing ourselves the room for originality. Adam describes Martin Luther King’s preparation for his seminal “I have a dream” speech. It turns out he ad-libbed this most memorable part of the speech. Adam credits the “Zeigarnik effect”, which dates back to a 1927 finding by the Russian Scientist Bluma Zeigarnik. He demonstrated how human beings keep replaying unfinished task in their mind and hence have a better memory of them. Once a task is marked as finished in our brain, we have a tendency to forget about it. There are many little psychological theories from Maslow to Kahneman that Adam uses to nudge you towards a more non-conformist state of mind. I was also surprised to learn that my siblings, parents, mentors, all play their part in nurturing and encouraging my original instint. Read the book to learn for yourself.

An Extraordinary Time

Author: Marc Levinson

The Annual GDP growth for the US has dropped from a high of 5% in the sixties to around 1.5% currently.  If you look at China or India, they are roughly in the 7% range in the current times. But it wasn’t always like this. If you are curious to learn about the ups and downs of the world economies starting from World War 2, Marc has a wealth of knowledge that he shares with us in his perspective of the economic journey of the major parts of the world after the war.

In a nutshell, his thesis is that the first twenty five years after the war saw an unprecedented growth in the economy. It was the classic postwar boom and economic growth in the Western World reached its peak around 1970. There were plenty of high paid manufacturing jobs in the US that brought overall prosperity to the nation.  After 1970 productivity slowed down. Labor Unions got powerful and demanded higher wages and perks. Furthermore the inefficiencies of government regulation and large state run industries (coal, steel, transportation, etc.) started to weigh heavily on the economy. 

The transportation system in US was highly regulated in the 70s. Airline routes are a good example of how the government limited the number of airlines on any given route and that allowed them to charge high prices. They made a good profit despite the fact that many planes had tons of empty seats.  Compare that with the disruption caused by Uber today with Taxis. They have opened the market up not only deregulated the taxi industry, but have gone further and made it incredibly easy for an individual to offer you a transportation service for a fee. 

Marc takes a heavy subject like world economics and narrates many of these events in a story-like manner that makes the book enjoyable. I marveled at how many of the changes like privatization, seemed to be trends that spread from one country to another.  If you are remotely interested in economics, I highly recommend this book.