How do creative people come up with the best ideas?

The risky business of swimming against the tide

A dozen or so years ago, Grant armenia mobile phone numbers database a professor at the prestigious Wharton School of Business, was approached by a student with an offer to invest in his company. The guy said he was working with three colleagues and they were trying to revolutionize the market by selling things online. They had recently witnessed how Zappos changed the face of the footwear market by opening an online channel. So they began to wonder if they could do the same with prescription glasses.

The students told their family, friends and acquaintances about their idea, but they were very critical of it and strongly advised them against the business. After all, no one would buy glasses online. First, they had to measure them and adjust them to their vision defect. This could not be done online. Since no one sells glasses online yet, there had to be some catch – they kept repeating. After all, someone would have thought of it long ago and made a similar business.

Grant refused to invest in the company. As it turned out, it was the worst financial decision he ever made. The eyeglass company is called Warby Parker, and it hit its sales target for a year in less than a month. It’s one of the most innovative companies in the world, valued at over a billion dollars.

How did they achieve success? 

Adam Grant explains in his book that there are two paths: conformism, or yielding to influence, adapting to prevailing conditions, and originality. Conformism is following everything along well-trodden paths. Originality is looking for paths less traveled, proclaiming innovative ideas that often cause resistance and opposition from the environment, but ultimately contribute to improving the situation.

The first step to originality is creativity. The idea must be innovative, useful and beneficial. But not only that. Rebels are people who strive to make their visions come true and are aware that they should take matters into their own hands and start changing something. The creators of Warby Parker were original enough to come up with an unconventional way of selling glasses online, but they also went a step further. The real innovation took place at the level of price and availability. They started selling glasses online for $95, which in a store would cost $500. But what distinguishes the founders of Warby Parker from other start-ups? Adam Grant gives four distinguishing features.

Doubt about the project

Why didn’t the business psychology professor predict the company’s success? Grant recalls that when he told the students about the idea google partner premier they had many doubts. They said that each of them had a backup plan and another job. That’s probably why the author of the book doubted their courage to be original, because he probably expected that someone who would succeed in this industry would resemble Steve Jobs – a self-confident nonconformist.

However, while working on the book, Grant conducted research on doubt. There are two types of doubt: self-doubt and doubt about the idea. Self-doubt paralyzes, makes a person freeze. On the other hand, doubt about the idea energizes, because it motivates experimentation. Instead of saying that you are worthless, it is worth shifting the burden to the work – first versions are never the best. So how can you achieve a better level? Adam Grant says that the clue lies in the web browser you are using. According to the author of the book, you can predict someone’s efficiency and commitment to the development of a project just by knowing what browser they are using.

It turns out that Firefox and Chrome users are more productive and goal-oriented than Explorer and Safari users. The key to understanding this relationship is a very small detail: how you started using the browser. If someone uses Internet Explorer or Safari, it means that they were already installed on their computer. If someone wanted to use Firefox or Chrome, they had to go through the process of installing and customizing user preferences. In short, it’s about being the type of person who takes the initiative, who is constantly looking for something new and better.

Generating a large number of ideas

Another distinguishing feature of originals guatemala lists which Grant writes about, is the maximization of the probability that they will be able to come up with a brilliant idea and implement it. The key to success in this case is simply the constant generation of new ideas. Within five years, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, the phonograph, and the carbon telephone microphone. In the same period, he also filed over a hundred patents for other inventions. It also turns out that during the period in which Shakespeare created three of his five most popular works – Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello – he also wrote two plays that are considered by critics to be among his weakest (they have an undeveloped plot and character psychology).

The public opinion is that in order to produce better quality products, fewer of them should be produced. However, Grant argues in his book that this is a false assumption. When it comes to generating ideas, the more of them there are, the more the quality of the ideas increases . Looking at many other fields, the most original people are those who fail more often, simply because they try more often. Adam Grant analyzed the achievements of classical music composers and the sheer number of compositions. It turns out that the more they created, the greater the variety of their works and the greater the chance of creating something original. Even Bach, Beethoven and Mozart had to create hundreds of works for at

least some of them to achieve the status of a masterpiece.

Many people are simply unoriginal because they generate a small number of ideas and focus on modifying and improving them. The twenty-fifth idea may be weak, but the twenty-seventh may turn out to be a bull’s-eye. And how should you evaluate your own ideas in general? Grant draws attention to appropriate feedback. You should generate as many ideas as possible and observe which of them are met with a positive response, but what is important in this case – the response of the group to which they are addressed. A mother or husband may not be the best recipients of ideas if they are not dedicated to them or they do not have knowledge of a given market. Similarly, authorities in one field may not know about another industry. But feedback from the right target group does not guarantee success.

Vuja de Syndrome

It’s a moment when you look at something you’ve seen many times, but now you have a fresh eye and you can see something really new. That’s what happened when the film team at Disney Studios created The Lion King , a version of Shakespeare’s drama for the youngest. It was the same with the film script that languished without acceptance for 50 years, just because the main character was an evil queen. Later, one of the scriptwriters changed the villain to a more complex heroine in terms of the character’s psychology, and Frozen turned out to be the best animated film in the history of cinema.

Often, when evaluating ideas, the attitude of a cautious judge is adopted, whose job is to minimize risk. Attention is focused on the costs of investing in bad ideas, not on the benefits of a good idea. This was the case with the movie studio heads who failed to see the potential of such blockbusters as Star Wars , ET , or Pulp Fiction . The Xbox video game console project was also almost rejected by Microsoft, and Xerox’s work on a laser printer was almost halted simply because it was assumed to be impractical and very expensive.

Grant suggests in his book that when faced with uncertainty and trying to evaluate your own original ideas, it’s worth asking for feedback from your peers. They know the industry, understand the audience, and can assess the risk, but they can also provide an outsider’s perspective. They have an open and fresh perspective and aren’t personally involved in the project, which allows them to maintain their distance. Grant also cites an example in the book, emphasizing that nothing brings comedians more joy than making another comedian laugh. And that’s exactly the kind of feedback you should be looking for.

In Praise of Procrastination

Procrastination can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. You don’t have to be first and get everything done right away. According to statistics, successful innovators are mostly people who don’t always get everything done on time and are the first to deliver. You can see that originals start fast but finish slowly. When the founders of Warby Parker didn’t achieve anything in their first six months, Grant wrote them off. And they were still trying to find a way to get consumers to buy glasses online. It turns out that the first-mover advantage is a myth. Studies of more than 50 different product categories show that companies that start with a product first fail by 47%, and those that develop an existing product face an 8% failure rate . Facebook came after Myspace, and Google after Yahoo. It’s much easier to improve something than to create it from scratch.