Newsmakers

Nilofer Merchant, MBA ’00, is the author of an upcoming book titled, Onlyness, in which she tells of an intersect between vertical power and horizontal influence in business. To her, this intersection, the “onlyness,” is a way for anyone to make a difference with their own powerful ideas. Her book draws upon 20-plus years of professional experience, helping grow various businesses, launching over 100 products, and netting $18 billion in sales.

She was recently the subject of an article by The Drum which spoke to her about "Onlyness" and how the concept came about. An excerpt from the article:

"These wild ideas that are currently trapped inside people, because we don't know how to actually unleash that individual power and then connect to the power of many. That represents a huge amount of economic growth. Ideas drive our modern economy, but if the only ideas we accept are from the people we expect to see it from, then we're basically telling a really large swath of a group, saying, 'No, no, no, we're not going to acknowledge you,'" said Merchant, who said that the people that are being told no are often young, women, people of color or older.

Merchant says that each of us has the potential to be a change maker, owning the narrative power of our wild idea. But we must understand that we cannot do it alone. We need to use our allies to help change our industry and our work, and we must allow ourselves to unlock a level of capacity we may not have ever seen before".

Read the full article and learn more about Nilofer Merchant here»