Nilofer Merchant

NILOFER MERCHANT is a former tech executive, best-selling author on innovation and collaboration, a TED mainstage speaker, and the recipient of the Future Thinker Award from Thinkers 50.  Merchant reveals new ways of connecting our ideas to the world, in an era when the potential to make a difference is wide-open. She began her career in business twenty five years ago as an administrative assistant, quickly rising to division leader, to a CEO, and even to a board member of a NASDAQ-traded company. She has personally launched more than one hundred products, netting eighteen billion dollars in sales, and has held executive positions everywhere, from Fortune 500 companies like Apple and Autodesk, to start-ups in the early days of the web, such as Golive, which was later bought by Adobe. Merchant’s second book, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra, was chosen by Fast Company as one of their “Best Business Books of 2012.” Her newest title, The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World, reveals proven strategies to unleash the power of a new idea, no matter how weird or wild it may seem. Her famed TED Talk, Got A Meeting? Take A Walk, has been seen by nearly three million viewers. @nilofer