Originals

I've been reading lots of good books and this one's no exception. "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" by Adam Grant is excellent (I also recommend his other book, "Give and Take").

The book has eight parts and mainly talks about the profile and practices of innovative people, but I'm going to highlight the ones that surprised me the most by debunking myths that seemed obvious.

ABOUT RISKS

For example, in chapter 1, where he talks about creative destruction, I thought I was going to read the usual stuff: that entrepreneurs are people with above-average boldness, who are born with some kind of biological immunity to risk, who are radical and aren't afraid of anything. The word "entrepreneur" itself, coined by economist Richard Cantillon, means "one who carries the risk, the risk bearer."

Well, he tells us that a study conducted by two researchers over more than 12 years with about 5,000 entrepreneurs of all ages shows exactly the opposite.

The most successful ones are quite risk-averse, believe it or not?

The first surprising discovery is that the overwhelming majority of innovators kept full-time jobs for years and did their entrepreneurial work in their spare time (nights and weekends). The explanation makes sense.

Without the pressure of having to pay the most urgent living expenses, it's possible to focus on developing a well-finished product. If someone's in debt, almost bankrupt and urgently needs to sell, they'll call the product finished before it's actually ready.

I didn't know this, but Steve Jobs' partner at Apple, Steve Wozniak, continued working as a full-time engineer at Hewlett-Packard even after finishing the development of the Apple I. Only after the company really started making profit did he feel safe enough to quit.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin considered selling Google because the project was interfering with both their PhDs (and they could lose their scholarships). Luckily no one bought it, the duo defended their theses and could work full-time on the search engine.

Brian May was in the middle of his astrophysics PhD when he started playing guitar in Queen. Only after defending his thesis could he dedicate himself to composing "We Will Rock You."

Cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, continued working full-time at Pacific Bell for seven years after the first strip was published in major US newspapers. Stephen King worked as a teacher, janitor and gas station attendant until seven years after writing his first story.

The examples don't stop there; the research showed that entrepreneurs who keep their jobs have 33% fewer chances of going bankrupt than those who throw caution to the wind right from the start.

The author explains that there needs to be balance in everything; if someone is original in one aspect of life, they need to be stable in others to maintain balance.

You can't innovate without social and emotional stability. Having a sense of security is fundamental for the freedom to dare.

The best entrepreneurs don't maximize risks; on the contrary, they always try to minimize and mitigate them.

Henry Ford himself continued in his job as chief engineer at Thomas Edison even after developing and patenting the carburetor, which revolutionized the automotive industry and gave birth to his empire.

Even Bill Gates, who dropped out of college, managed his absences for a whole year so he wouldn't lose his spot until he was sure his business would work out. This kind of high-risk behavior on one hand and conventional on the other is normal in the stock market; portfolios always have a mix of risky stocks and more stable ones.

This happens because innovators, even brilliant ones, are more ordinary people than you'd imagine; they're scared to death, insecure and, in many cases, need a big push from family and friends to keep going.

Don't believe those pretty entrepreneurship stage speeches; all that confidence, most of the time, is just a facade.

THE DÉJÀ VU AND THE VUJA DE

Grant also creates a new term; instead of déjà vu (that feeling that we've lived through a situation before), he invents vuja de (which is looking at something familiar as if it were the first time, in a totally new way).

Vuja de allows someone to be innovative even within a company or doing the same job.

QUANTITY IS IMPORTANT FOR QUALITY

The book also shows studies that confirm what was already known: quantity is very important.

You can't be excellent without producing a lot.

To generate a few dozen masterpieces, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before dying at 35; Beethoven produced 650 pieces and Bach, more than a thousand.

Picasso's collection includes 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics and 12,000 drawings, not to mention tapestries and other experiments.

Einstein published 248 papers, but very few actually had impact. Psychologist Dean Simonton discovered that masterpieces emerge during periods of highest productivity.

Thomas Edison, for example, has 1,093 registered patents, but less than a dozen were truly revolutionary.

He says many people aren't original because they generate few ideas and are content to obsessively refine the first ones.

The psychologist's studies concluded that you need at least 25 ideas to arrive at an original one.

OTHER AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE

Another important finding: to have original ideas you need to broaden your areas of knowledge.

Grant presents a table that shows, for example, that Nobel Prize winners tend to have hobbies related to drawing, painting and sculpture seven times more frequently than the average scientist.

Writing poetry, essays and short stories are 12 times more frequent, and manual work related to mechanics, electronics and woodworking, 7.5 times.

Now here's the most incredible part: Nobel Prize winners who dance, like magic or do amateur theater are up to 22 times more than their non-winning colleagues. The study found that among entrepreneurs and inventors, the phenomenon repeats itself.

ABOUT COMMUNICATING IDEAS

Something very interesting is about communicating original ideas to other people. There are two requirements for people to really listen: power and status. Power involves authority over others; status has to do with being respected and admired.

If someone has an original idea, it's not enough to have the power to boss other people around, whether through a position or money.

If they don't have status, they won't be respected among peers. Status can't be bought; it has to be earned and is based on the contributions the person makes to the group. Only then is it possible to gain credibility to present and have ideas accepted.

Once someone has authority (power and status) they also gain credibility to propose whatever they want.

But without that, ideas, whatever they are, face a lot of resistance. That's why the best strategy is to find a way to at least gain status before presenting any original proposal.

PUTTING THINGS OFF

Another myth destruction: procrastination isn't as bad as it seems (I confess this one shocked me!).

Of course it's not the cause of creativity, but it allows ideas time to mature.

When someone has to deliver work and keeps playing video games, they're actually incubating ideas and thinking about the project in the background.

EACH AGE WITH ITS STYLE

The last one, to wrap up: in suggestion boxes at big companies, the best ideas usually come from people over 55!

That's because they also tend to generate more ideas than average. In tech, the average age of startup founders who get venture capital is 38.

On the other hand, there are geniuses who bloom early, around 20, and then can barely produce much useful stuff afterward.

Scholar David Galenson shows that the reason is there are two different styles of innovators: conceptual and experimental.

Conceptual ones formulate a big idea and execute it quickly, since it usually doesn't require years of research and method.

Experimental ones solve problems through trial and error, learning and developing more ideas during the process.

Galenson says conceptual innovators are sprinters, and experimental ones are marathoners. Among Nobel Prize winners, the average age of conceptual ones is 43; the average for experimental ones is 61.

If an innovator is conceptual, they want to solve the problem right away, but don't dedicate themselves to maturing the solution, because they want to move on to something else quickly.

Experimental ones spend years polishing the solution.

There's still a world of interesting stuff in this book, which is why I highly recommend reading it.