Adam Grant

Quick Facts

• Role: Author, narrator, and guide; frames the book as a research-driven journey into how nonconformists drive change
• First appearance: The introduction’s 2009 anecdote about passing on an investment in Warby Parker
• Profession and background: Organizational psychologist and Wharton professor; former magician and Junior Olympic springboard diver
• Point of view: First-person narrator with no physical description given
• Key relationships: Sheryl Sandberg; the Warby Parker Founders; a cast of “originals” he studies across history and industry

Who They Are

As the mind and voice behind Originals, Adam Grant is both experimenter and explainer—an evidence-first thinker who dismantles popular myths about creativity and risk. He writes as a rigorous social scientist and a candid participant in the story, using his own misjudgments to model intellectual humility. By positioning himself as a learner alongside the reader, he becomes the book’s most persuasive proof: a rational skeptic who changes his mind when the data demand it. His “about the author” quirks—a magician and diver—hint at the disciplined, playful curiosity he brings to the work, and at his core function as a bridge between academic research and everyday decisions.

Personality & Traits

Grant’s voice blends self-skepticism with methodological rigor. He is not a romantic about boldness for its own sake; instead, he prefers to test appealing ideas against uncomfortable evidence. That tension—between caution and curiosity—drives the book’s most useful insights.

• Self-aware and humble: He opens with his “worst financial decision,” turning down Warby Parker, and dissects his own faulty assumptions. The self-audit invites readers to question their defaults alongside him, establishing trust.
• Curious and analytical: He reverse-engineers his error by tracing the data behind entrepreneurial success, moving beyond anecdotes to studies and replications. The book’s structure—hypothesis, evidence, application—shows a scientist’s appetite for disconfirmation.
• Engaging storyteller: Reviewers note a dinner-party ease in his prose; he translates complex findings into vivid case studies and practical takeaways without diluting nuance.
• Cautious, even risk-averse: He admits being drawn to the security of tenure and recognizes that hedging can be a strength. This vantage point lets him interrogate the mythology of boldness and reframe it as Risk Mitigation and the Myth of the Risk-Taker.
• Informed optimist: Praised by Sheryl Sandberg as an “informed optimist,” he resists cynicism; each chapter ends not just with diagnosis but with strategies, signaling his belief that originality is learnable.

Character Journey

Grant’s arc is intellectual: he begins with a near-Hollywood image of “originals” as fearless, all-in daredevils. The Warby Parker misread becomes his laboratory: he re-examines founders who kept day jobs, leaders who hedged, and icons (from Martin Luther King Jr. to Steve Jobs) whose influence grew through timing, coalition-building, and disciplined dissent. The accumulation of evidence overturns his starting model and replaces it with a subtler one: originals are often cautious experimenters who manage downside risk while pushing unconventional ideas. By charting this turn, he invites readers to practice the same mental pivot toward Challenging the Status Quo with rigor rather than bravado.

Key Relationships

• Sheryl Sandberg: As a close collaborator who writes the foreword, Sandberg publicly frames Grant as a rigorous thinker with uncommon generosity. Her characterization—“informed optimist”—captures his blend of scientific caution and practical hope, bolstering both his credibility and the book’s tone of actionable encouragement.

• The Warby Parker Founders: Grant’s interactions with Neil Blumenthal and his choice not to invest function as the narrative spark and recurring mirror. Their cautious rollout—keeping day jobs, testing, iterating—forces him to confront why he equated conviction with maximal risk, and their success becomes a case study in timing, hedging, and idea selection.

• The “Originals”: Whether examining Carmen Medina at the CIA or Donna Dubinsky at Apple, Grant treats his subjects as data points in a pattern rather than as isolated heroes. He reconstructs their contexts and constraints, showing how ordinary trade-offs (like when to speak up or how to sequence bets) compound into extraordinary outcomes.

Defining Moments

Grant’s most revealing moments are less about spectacle than about recalibration—points where he tests a comfortable story against stubborn facts and adjusts accordingly.

• The Warby Parker pitch: Turning down the investment becomes his touchstone failure. Why it matters: It reframes the book as an investigation into cognitive bias, not a victory lap—licensing the reader to mine their own misjudgments for insight rather than shame.

• The Google workshop on job crafting: Moving from analysis to design, Grant pilots interventions that help employees reshape roles around strengths and values. Why it matters: It shows the book’s pragmatic spine—originality isn’t a personality trait; it’s a set of teachable practices that organizations can nudge.

• Debunking his own assumptions: Realizing that successful originals often hedge—keeping options open, staging commitments—marks his central thesis shift. Why it matters: It replaces the myth of the swashbuckling genius with a replicable playbook of risk management, timing, and coalition-building.

Essential Quotes

Back in 2009, one of the founders pitched the company to me, offering me the chance to invest in Warby Parker. I declined. It was the worst financial decision I’ve ever made, and I needed to understand where I went wrong. This confession functions as the book’s methodological origin story. By centering his own error, Grant models the kind of ego-suspension that original thinking requires: the willingness to revisit cherished assumptions in light of results.

I declined to invest in Warby Parker because Neil and his friends were too much like me. I became a professor because I was passionate about discovering new insights, sharing knowledge, and teaching the next generations of students. But in my most honest moments, I know that I was also drawn to the security of tenure. Here, affinity bias and risk preferences collide. Grant recognizes that “liking” founders who resemble him blinded him to an uncomfortable truth: caution and conviction can coexist. The passage illuminates how self-knowledge becomes a tool for better judgment.

When I compared the choices of the Warby Parker team to my mental model of the choices of successful entrepreneurs, they didn’t match. Neil and his colleagues lacked the guts to go in with their guns blazing, which led me to question their conviction and commitment... In my mind, they were destined to fail because they played it safe instead of betting the farm. But in fact, this is exactly why they succeeded. This is the book’s hinge: the mismatch between myth and data. Grant reframes “playing it safe” not as cowardice but as strategic risk diversification—turning a supposed vice into the mechanism of success.

I want to debunk the myth that originality requires extreme risk taking and persuade you that originals are actually far more ordinary than we realize. The thesis in one breath. By stripping originality of mystique, Grant democratizes it: if originals are ordinary, the path is procedural—habits, timing, feedback loops—rather than genetic destiny.

I hope my findings will help people develop the courage and strategies to pursue originality, and give leaders the knowledge necessary to create cultures of originality in their teams and organizations. Grant’s aspiration doubles as a design spec for the book: equip individuals with playbooks and leaders with culture-building levers. It underscores his role as an “informed optimist,” translating research into tools that widen participation in creative change.