Wharton professor Adam Grant references a landmark study of Silicon Valley startups to demonstrate how early-stage hiring strategies impact long-term corporate performance.
Opinion
Grant: The self-esteem movement has been disastrous for entrepreneurs
“I would also say that the self-esteem movement has been disastrous for entrepreneurs in the sense that Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about thinking that you're special. It's about believing that, you know, somebody else could do this. Maybe I could…”
Insight
Grant: Pitching radical ideas requires starting with 'how', not 'why'
“But if you have a really original idea, that's terrible advice, because your why sounds insane to other people. And so if you're Meredith, or if you're Steve Jobs for that matter, sometimes the how is much more believable than the why.”
Assertion Supported
Grant: 40 years of research shows assigned devil's advocates rarely work
“If you look at 40 years of research by Charlene Nemeth at Berkeley, she shows that devil's advocates rarely work.”
Assertion Contradicted
Grant: Playing Minesweeper before brainstorming boosted business plan creativity by 28%
“So one of G has experiments randomly assigned people to procrastinate before developing business plan ideas by playing minesweeper. And they were, after doing that, 28% more creative than people who jumped right into the task.”
Insight
Adam Grant: Deep domain expertise leads to cognitive entrenchment
“The longer you learn a particular domain of knowledge, and the more you internalize it, the easier it is to become entrenched, where you basically take for granted assumptions that need to get questioned.”
Assertion Not yet assessed · timeframe Feb 2017
Grant: Nobel laureates are 22 times more likely to perform or act
“On average, Nobel Prize winners are twice as likely to play a musical instrument. They're seven times as likely to paint and do other kinds of art. They're 12 times as likely to write creative fiction, poetry, and they're 22 times as likely to act, dance, or p…”