Keynote: Onlyness: make your ideas powerful enough to dent the world

About the session

Thursday 24th June 2021, Live session 2*

14:10-14:40 EDT
19:10–19:40 BST
02:10-02:40 SGT (Friday 25th June 2021)

*Session repeats as per agenda sessions

Innovation depends on fresh takes, new perspectives and breakthrough ideas. If you're a start-up founder, entrepreneur, or just someone who wants to put a dent in the world, you know that all forward progress — whether in business, or society — is born of new ideas.

But most of us “cover” our wildest ideas — choosing to fit in and belong to the mainstream — even if it means denying ourselves and our desire to share our unique voice with the world. What might our world look like and what problems could we solve if any “wild idea”, regardless of its source, had an equal chance?

Into this context, business innovator Nilofer Merchant offers a way forward: Onlyness. Onlyness unlocks the capacity in each of us, all of us. Historically, when people were told their ideas are too weird, too wild, or simply “too much”, they tended to give up; not because they wanted to, but because when one has to choose between activating an idea and belonging to a community, belonging wins.

Every. Darn. Time.

Until now, that is. In today's world, you can easily find those who share the same purpose as you, who are equally passionate, motivated and mobilised. Now you can belong to your weird and wild ideas, and to a community of like-minded individuals.

This is THE POWER OF ONLYNESS — that an idea, born of the spot in which ONLY you stand, can scale by connectedNESS, to become mighty enough to dent the world. Companies of all sizes that harness this power will out-innovate the market. Moreover, this is how each and every one of us turns the change we want into reality.

Through inspirational stories, from her book, The Power of Onlyness, Merchant illuminates what is now possible.