Here is a brief excerpt from a recent addition to NPR’s “Author Interviews” series. To read the complete interview and check out others, please click here.
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In 2009, one of the founders of the online eyeglass maker Warby Parker approached management consultant Adam Grant about becoming an early investor. Grant says he declined because the company’s founders weren’t working at their startup full time; he also says it was the worst financial decision he’s ever made.
“I thought to be an entrepreneur you have to be a risk-taker and you have to be all in,” Grant tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “And what I didn’t realize at the time was, first of all, successful entrepreneurs are much more likely to play it safe and have back-up plans than failed entrepreneurs; and secondly, all of the time they spent working on other things was giving them the freedom to do something really original. If they had just gone in and started the company, they would have felt the pressure to release their product immediately. Instead, they had the time to figure out that they needed a home try-on program to get people to make the leap and order glasses online.”
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Here is one of the interview’s highlights:
On what a person’s Internet browser says about their level of nonconformity
I love this study. So I’m sitting at a conference one day and this economist, Mike Housman, presents a study showing that we can predict your job performance and your commitment at work just by knowing what Web browser you use. And I was stunned to find out that people who use Chrome and Firefox — this is in customer service and call center jobs — were better performers on the job. They also, on average, stayed around in those jobs 15 percent longer than their poor Internet Explorer and Safari peers.
And a lot of people hear this study and think: Well, great, if I want to get better at my job I should just download a new browser. Not quite the point, right? The point is: What browser you use signals something about the way that you tend to live your life. If you use Firefox or Chrome, you have to download those browsers; whereas Safari and Internet Explorer — they come pre-installed on your computer, they’re the default. And if you’re the kind of person who just accepts the default, you tend not to take as many original steps as the rest of us.
If you’re somebody who had that instinct to say, you know, “I wonder if there’s a better browser out there,” that’s just a tiny clue that you might be the kind of person who’s willing to reject other defaults in your life too.
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Here is a direct link to the Grant interview.
To learn more about Adam and his work, please click here.
To learn more about National Public Radio, please click here.