Adam Grant

Adam Grant (born 1981) is an American organizational psychologist, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and author of popular science books. His work sits within contemporary organizational psychology and has reached a wide readership beyond academia, which accounts for much of his current prominence.

He was born in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. He studied at Harvard and later earned a doctorate in organizational psychology at the University of Michigan. During college he worked as a professional magician. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining Wharton as an associate professor in 2009, becoming the school's youngest tenured professor.

His early research focused on prosocial motivation, the desire to benefit others. Grant showed that this drive is strongest when it goes together with intrinsic motivation, a pattern he found among firefighters and fundraising callers. He later extended these ideas to creativity and, with Barry Schwartz, argued that many positive traits, such as optimism or generosity, can become harmful when taken to excess. His books, including Give and Take, Originals, Think Again and Hidden Potential, bring these findings to general readers, and his influence can be seen in how organizations think about reciprocity, originality and intellectual humility.