Adam Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated teacher for four straight years. He has been recognized as one of the world’s 25 most influential management thinkers and the world’s top 40 business professors under 40.
Adam is the author of two New York Times bestselling books translated into 34 languages. Originals explores how individuals champion new ideas and leaders fight groupthink; it is a #1 national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of February 2016. Give and Take examines why helping others drives our success, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal–as well as one of Oprah’s riveting reads and Harvard Business Review’s ideas that shaped management.
Adam received a standing ovation for his 2016 TED talk on the surprising habits of original thinkers and was voted the audience’s favorite speaker at The Nantucket Project on the success of givers and takers. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NFL, Merck, Goldman Sachs, Pixar, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, the United Nations, the U.S. Army and Navy, and the World Economic Forum, where he has been honored as a Young Global Leader.
As a contributing writer on work and psychology for the New York Times, Adam’s op-eds on raising a moral child and a creative child have each been shared over 300,000 times on social media. His research focuses on generosity, motivation and meaningful work, championing new ideas, personality traits like introversion, and leadership, collaboration, culture, and organizational change. His studies have been highlighted in David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, Drive by Dan Pink, Quiet by Susan Cain, and Thrive by Arianna Huffington.
Adam is a member of the Lean In board, the founder of the Authors@Wharton series, and the co-director of Wharton People Analytics. He has received the Excellence in Teaching award for every class he has taught. He earned his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, completing it in less than three years, and his B.A. from Harvard University, magna cum laude with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He is a former magician and junior Olympic springboard diver.
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
From Facebook's COO and Wharton's top-rated professor, the number-one New York Times best-selling authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving forward after life's inevitable setbacks.
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. "I was in 'the void,'" she writes, "a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe." Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build.
Option B combines Sheryl's personal insights with Adam's eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Beginning with the gut-wrenching moment when she finds her husband, Dave Goldberg, collapsed on a gym floor, Sheryl opens up her heart - and her journal - to describe the acute grief and isolation she felt in the wake of his death. But Option B goes beyond Sheryl's loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere...and to rediscover joy.
Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces. Many of these lessons can be applied to everyday struggles, allowing us to brave whatever lies ahead.
Two weeks after losing her husband, Sheryl was preparing for a father-child activity. "I want Dave," she cried. Her friend replied, "Option A is not available," and then promised to help her make the most of Option B.
We all live some form of Option B. This book will help us all make the most of it.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
Start the new year with the number one New York Times best seller that examines how people can champion new ideas - and how leaders can fight groupthink, from the author of Give and Take and co-author of Option B.
“Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world.” (Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and The Tipping Point)
“Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful ideas. It will not only change the way you see the world; it might just change the way you live your life. And it could very well inspire you to change your world.” (Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author ofLean In)
With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.