Adam Grant missed a huge opportunity.

Four college students proposed a business idea to him, and Grant took a pass. His subsequent self-flagellating turned into a Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.

I picked it up with more than a little reluctance. I don’t know how much originality I can tolerate. Say, some young lady wears combat boots with her prom gown. That’s original, but I hesitate to give her a high five, lest she add a spiky dog collar to next year’s formalwear.

Some writers show up at my critique group with strange stories. Very original. Also, highly incomprehensible.

Then there was the fellow I knew in college whose social style was: drop in unplanned, ditch when planned. He flaunted his raspy cough and carried around scriptures encased in either kangaroo or koala fur. (Maybe you can guess where he served his mission?) But he was original.

He likely isn’t what Grant had in mind. Those college boys meant to help people by selling eyeglasses online. Folks like this come up with millions of original ideas and Grant considers:

How does one know if one’s idea will take off? Is it the non-conformist’s enthusiasm that carries them across the finish line?

How does one persuade others to buy in? What social capital does the original thinker need?

How does one be original? Is it nature or nurture? Is it the guy with enough guts to dump the day job and go for broke? Is it birth order?

And we’re not only talking about building better mousetraps here. We’re talking social causes. You can read about an original thinker who threw off a dictator — no mean feat — then trained others to do the same.

Grant laments the originality that could have been, but never was. “We can only imagine how many Wozniaks, Michelangelos, and Kings never pursued, . . . their original ideas.”

Originality must also do battle against group think. Grant cites his favorite example, Bridgewater Associates, a runaway success among investment companies. Bridgewater’s founder initiated a system aimed to fight group think at every turn. (To me, his methods sound like inviting the world to read your diary. In fact, read this.)

I take Grant’s point, however. If you have an idea that might help people, speak up. You’ll find some tips in these pages.

Just don’t plague us with your strangeness. Says Polaroid inventor Edwin Land (who also appears in Originals), “No person could possibly be original in one area unless he were possessed of the emotional and social stability that comes from fixed attitudes in all areas other than the one in which he is being original.”

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