A leading innovation expert illuminates how each of us can unlock the capacity of even our wildest ideas to make a unique contribution to the world.

Most of us long to make a dent in the universe, to leave a world that’s better than the one into which we’re born. Until recently, the only way to pursue this goal was by joining a big company or some other institution and rise in the ranks to have enough power to do so. Meanwhile, the rest of us with new and fresh takes kept getting told our ideas were too weird or too wild.

In The Power of Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant offers a new pathway to make those wild ideas reality, and a model of a world in which everyone’s ideas can count. Our onlyness is a spot that only we occupy-a function of our history and experience, visions and hopes. It’s through our onlyness, and the new power of social media, that we connect to others who share our sense of purpose and together bring about remarkable change.

Filled with accounts of ordinary people who have exploited the possibilities of this new era, The Power of Onlyness demonstrates how the power of one can be tapped into to enlist the power of many. People such as Zach Wahls, a teenager who convinced the Boy Scouts of America to include kids who were gay. Or Kimberly Bryant, who established Black Girls Code to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming. Or Jamie Heywood, who began Patients Like Me as a Web community to shift how previously incurable diseases are now getting cured. These change agents blazed their own trails because they had no map to guide them, and their stories light a path for the rest of us to realize our own most passionate ideas.