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ADAM GRANT

Organizational Psychologist, The Wharton School of Business; Best-Selling Author; Host: WorkLife, a TED original podcast

Named one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers
Has been Wharton’s top-rated professor for 7 straight years
Has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune’s 40 under 40
TED talks have been viewed more than 25 million times
He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 5 books that have sold millions of copies and been translated into 35 languages
He was tenured at Wharton while still in his twenties, and has received the Excellence in Teaching Award for every class that he has taught

“If knowledge is power, knowing what you don’t know is wisdom.”

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant helps build innovative, collaborative work cultures by activating trailblazers to improve the status quo.

Adam Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated professor for 7 straight years. As an organizational psychologist, he is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and live more generous and creative lives. He has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune’s 40 under 40.

He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 5 books that have sold millions of copies and been translated into 35 languages: Think Again, Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. His books have been named among the year’s best by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Adam is the host of WorkLife, a chart-topping TED original podcast. His TED talks on origi-nal thinkers and givers and takers have been viewed more than 25 million times. He received a standing ovation at TED in 2016 and was voted the audience’s favorite speaker at The Nantucket Project. His speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA, Bridgewater, and the Gates Foundation. He writes on work and psychology for the New York Times, has served on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon, and has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has more than 4 million followers on social media and features new insights in his free monthly newsletter, GRANTED.

Adam was profiled in The New York Times Magazine cover story, Is giving the secret to getting ahead? He was tenured at Wharton while still in his twenties, and has received the Excellence in Teaching Award for every class that he has taught. He is the founder and host of the Authors@Wharton speaker series, and co-director of Wharton People Analytics. He curates the Next Big Idea Club along with Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, and Dan Pink, handpicking two new books each quarter for subscribers and donating 100% of profits to provide books for children in under-resourced communities. He and his wife Allison have published a children’s picture book on generosity, The Gift Inside the Box. Adam is also the cofounder of Givitas, a knowledge collaboration platform that makes it easy to give and receive help in 5 minutes a day, and an angel investor in startups in HR and culture, technology, and consumer products.

Adam earned his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, completing it in less than 3 years, and his B.A. from Harvard University, magna cum laude with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He has received awards for distinguished scholarly achievement from the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the National Science Foundation, and been recognized as one of the world’s most-cited, most prolific, and most influential researchers in business and econom-ics. His pioneering research has increased performance and reduced burnout among engi-neers, teachers, and salespeople, and motivated safety behaviors among doctors, nurses, and lifeguards. He is a former magician and Junior Olympic springboard diver.

Corporate Culture
Innovation
Teamwork
Creativity
Leadership

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

The past year has led us to rethink fundamental assumptions—where to work, how to manage remote culture and collaboration, whether to reimagine our strategy and our products or services. Yet too many leaders and employees are reacting to events instead of proactively looking for opportunities to think again. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant has spent the past decade studying this problem at organizations ranging from the NBA to Pixar to NASA, and he finds that the very skills that make us good at thinking and learning can make us worse at rethinking and unlearning. Building on his new book, Think Again—which has been called “brilliant” by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman—Adam examines how we can update our own opinions, open other people’s minds, and build a learning organization in which people know what they don’t know and are eager to improve on the status quo. His eye-opening evidence and entertaining delivery will leave you determined to never again say “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

To survive and thrive, organizations need original thinking. Yet most individuals stay silent instead of voicing their best ideas—and many leaders stifle dissent rather than encouraging it. Drawing on his blockbuster new book, Originals, Adam Grant explores how we can all get better at recognizing and championing new ideas, how to overcome fear and doubt and how to build cultures that welcome diverse perspectives and honest feedback. He reveals why late entrants typically beat first movers, friendly managers end up being the least supportive, devil’s advocates often backfire but contrarian opinions are useful even when they’re wrong, and the values that help organizations prosper early on are the same ones that thwart their growth later. Grant’s insights on unleashing originality have been praised by J.J. Abrams, Richard Branson, Malcolm Gladwell, Sheryl Sandberg and Peter Thiel, and this talk brings them to life in ways that are both surprising and entertaining.

Givers Take All: Creating a Culture of Productive Generosity

Culture is a cornerstone of success, but many leaders struggle in managing the cultures of their teams and organizations. Based on a decade of research and consulting with Fortune 500 companies, including recent projects at JetBlue, Goldman Sachs, Teach For America and Warby Parker, Adam Grant argues that the highest-performing organizations are the ones that embrace an ethos of knowledge sharing, helping and mentoring. In this dynamic presentation, Adam outlines the key strategies for building a culture of productive generosity. He covers how leaders and organizations can improve practices around selection and hiring, recognition and rewards, and collaboration and coordination to boost revenue, efficiency and satisfaction.

Resilience at Work: A Fireside Chat with Adam Grant

In this fireside chat, Adam will field questions about how to build resilience in ourselves and our teams. Every organization faces adversity—from external disruption and internal errors to customer complaints and employee conflicts. And we all face our own professional chal-lenges, from failure to rejection to disappointment. Building on his bestselling book Option B with Sheryl Sandberg, Adam engages in lively dialogue about how we can confront our weaknesses, maintain our motivation after making mistakes, and embrace the criticism that we normally avoid. He also covers vivid examples and eye-opening evidence about supporting our colleagues when they face hardship and creating the psychological safety to voice and solve real problems. This conversation can be done with an interviewer of your choice.