Onlyness.
The foundational element of all entrepreneurship or success in the market begins with celebrating each human and, more specifically, something I’ve termed onlyness.
Onlyness is that thing that only one particular person can bring to a situation. It includes the skills, passions, and purpose of each one of us. Onlyness is fundamentally about honoring each person, first as we view ourselves, and second as we are valued. Each of us is standing in a spot that no one else occupies. That unique point of view is born of our accumulated experience, perspective, and vision. Embracing onlyness means that, as contributors, we must embrace our history, not deny it. This includes both our “dark” and our “light” sides. Because when we deny our history, vision, perspective, we are also denying a unique point of view, that which only we can bring to the situation.
Each onlyness is essential for solving new problems, as well as for finding new solutions to old problems. Without it, people are simply cogs in a machine—dispensable and undervalued—and we’re back to the 800-pound gorilla approach. With it, gazelles are singularly unique and able to contribute meaningfully.
It’s not that everyone will, but that anyone can.
About our speaker.
Nilofer Merchant has gone from admin to CEO to board member of a NASDAQ-traded company along her 20 year career, gathering monikers such as “the Jane Bond of Innovation” along the way for her ability to guide Fortune 500 and startup companies through impossible odds.
She’s worked for major companies like Apple (with Steve Jobs) and Autodesk (personally hired and fired by Carol Bartz) and startups in the early days of the Web (Golive/ later bought by Adobe). And Logitech, Symantec, HP, Yahoo, VMWare, and many others have turned to her guidance to develop new product strategies, enter new markets, defend against competitors, and optimize revenues. And, Merchant is one of the few people who can say they’ve fought a competitive battle against Microsoft and won, for Symantec’s Anti-Virus $2.1B annual business. She has personally launched more than 100 products, netting $18B in sales, with expertise in Europe and US markets. Today she serves on boards for both public and private companies.
The 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra, published by Harvard Business Review in 2012 follows her previous book, The New How (Oreilly, 2010), on Collaborative work. She lectures on innovation, board governance, and marketing at Stanford University.
You can follow her current thinking at nilofermerchant.com and follow her on Twitter @Nilofer.