The world needs creativity to solve its problems. We tend to think of “creative” people as artists or eccentrics, but every founder, every developer, every sales advisor has the capacity to be original — and to compete on it. Adam Grant, Wharton professor and author of Originals, argues that originality is a universal mode of thinking that can be developed, and that it is what makes meaningful change possible.
For a residential developer trying to win against larger, better-funded national builders, originality is a real advantage. The national builders run a standard playbook. Your edge is the willingness to do something they won’t.
Six ideas from Originals, applied to development.
1. Vuja de — question the status quo
The book’s subtitle: “How non-conformists move the world.” The non-conformists are the ones who don’t accept that the way things are is the way they have to stay.
Grant uses the term “vuja de” — the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu is when you sense you’ve experienced something before. Vuja de is when you’re looking at something familiar and you suddenly see it as if for the first time.
For a developer, the practice is to walk through your own sales office, your own model home, your own website, and your own follow-up sequence as a buyer would. What feels generic? What feels obviously broken? What is your team doing because “that’s how it’s done” rather than because it’s the right answer? Most projects have ten things in plain sight that are leaking sales because nobody looked at them with fresh eyes.
2. Quantity = quality
The cliché is “quality over quantity.” Research disagrees. The amount of work you produce is the strongest predictor of how good your best work will be.
Perfectionists tend to do less work because they want every output to be excellent. Originals tend to do more work, and the best of that volume is what becomes excellent.
For a marketing function inside a developer, this means producing more content than feels comfortable. More posts. More videos. More email tests. More owner-story interviews. Most of it will be average. Some of it will land. The developers who publish 50 pieces of content this year will outperform the ones who publish five “perfect” ones.
3. Try new things
Originality comes from combining ideas across domains. Grant recommends traveling, learning new languages, talking to people who disagree with you, picking up unrelated skills.
For a developer, this means looking at how other industries have solved problems analogous to yours. How does luxury hospitality handle the post-sale experience? How does Tesla handle product education without a dealership? How does a SaaS company handle a long sales cycle? Most of the better moves in residential development the next decade will come from cross-pollination, not from copying the developer down the road.
4. Procrastinate strategically
Strategic procrastination — taking longer to finish something so you can iterate, refine, and let new techniques emerge — is associated with more original output. Leonardo da Vinci took 16 years to finish the Mona Lisa. Not because he couldn’t do it faster, but because he kept refining how he handled light.
For a developer, the parallel is resisting the urge to ship a project, a campaign, or a website at the first version. Sit with it. Let new ideas accumulate. Make the second draft sharper than the first.
This applies less to operational decisions (move fast on those) and more to creative decisions: positioning, messaging, brand identity. Those benefit from time.
5. Listen to criticism
We’re trained to ignore critics because we assume they’re trying to hurt us. Grant argues that two kinds of criticism are gold: criticism from genuine peers (other developers, other operators) and criticism from people who fundamentally disagree with you (skeptical buyers, owners who had a bad experience, brokers who don’t recommend you).
The peer criticism sharpens the work. The skeptic criticism reveals what your sales team has been politely papering over. Both are uncomfortable. Both are how the project gets better.
For a developer, build a feedback loop. NPS scores from owners, exit interviews with buyers who toured but didn’t buy, candid conversations with sales advisors about what they hear in the field. The information is there. Most developers don’t ask for it.
6. Promote your ideas strategically
The biggest problem original ideas face: society isn’t ready for them, and demand never materializes. Grant’s recommendation is to introduce new ideas gradually and to package them with familiar references that make them feel safer.
For a developer launching something genuinely new — a different community model, a different sales structure, a different financing approach — the lesson is: don’t lead with the radical version. Lead with the familiar version, layer in the differentiator gradually, and let buyers acclimate.
The other half of this: marketing matters. The greatest project in the metro will lose to the second-best project with better marketing. Originality without promotion is just a hobby.
Conclusions
- Question the status quo. Walk through your own operation as a buyer would.
- Triple your output. Volume produces quality.
- Try new things. Cross-pollinate from outside the industry.
- Procrastinate strategically — on creative work.
- Seek criticism from peers and skeptics.
- Promote your ideas. Originality without marketing dies.
For more on packaging ideas memorably, see Make Your Ideas Stick.
