The Power of Onlyness

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by Nilofer Merchant

An expert on innovation discusses why your job no longer limits your potential to make a difference. If you're like most people, you want to make a difference but don't have the qualifications or a seat at the table, can't get past the gatekeepers, and aren't high enough in any hierarchy to have your voice heard. In The Power of Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant, one of the world's greatest business strategists, shows that we've arrived at a once-in-a-lifetime moment for your ideas to "have an effect" on the world. Power is now characterized by "onlyness," that point in the universe where you are the only one, based on your unique background, experiences, visions, and hopes, thanks to the Internet, which allows ideas to propagate through networks rather than hierarchies. If you build on your individual component of purpose and connect with people who are as motivated, you have a lever to change the world. This new skill is presently within your grasp, but mastering it will need you to understand how to successfully organize others behind your ideas. Through inspiring and instructional anecdotes, Merchant teaches how to release the centrifugal force of a new idea, no matter how bizarre or wild it may look.

Consider how much better the world would be if every idea was given a chance, not only those that came from anticipated people and places. What long-unsolvable challenges would we take on, what new levels of creativity would be unleashed, and who may be the one to make a breakthrough that would benefit ourselves, our communities, and, most crucially, our economy? Onlyness' limitless potential has already been recognized by Thinkers 50, the Oscars of management, who named it one of the five corporate concepts that will define the next two decades. Why do certain people's ideas have a scalable influence, independent of their authority or rank? The Power of Onlyness is the first book to properly unravel this puzzle, allowing anybody to scratch the surface.