Unique You: Nigel Nicholson on why individuality matters more than ever
New book argues individuality is essential in the age of social media and AI
What does it really mean to be yourself in a world obsessed with categories, comparisons, and algorithms?
In his new book, Unique You: How Individuality Works and Why It Matters, published on 23 February by Hogan Press, London Business School Professor Emeritus Nigel Nicholson offers a powerful and timely answer. Drawing on decades of research and teaching at LBS, the book reframes individuality not as an anomaly or a privilege, but as the defining feature of human life.
Nicholson’s starting point is deceptively simple: no one like you has ever lived before, and no one like you will ever live again. From this, the book explores how individuality is formed through genetics, experience, and choice, and how it is often constrained by modern pressures to label, classify, and standardise human behaviour.
Written in a clear, popular style, Unique You is built around stories rather than abstractions. Nicholson draws on biographies of well-known figures, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Henry Fonda, alongside vivid accounts from his students and his own life. These narratives reveal how people often express their truest selves indirectly, through work, art, leadership, or public performance.
The book grows directly out of Nicholson’s long-running and highly influential teaching at London Business School, particularly his Sloan course on biography, widely regarded by participants as life-changing. Developed over more than 20 years, the course encourages senior leaders to reflect deeply on their own life stories and those of others. That approach shapes the book’s central framework: destiny, drama, deliberation, and development, a practical way of understanding how lives unfold.
Unique You is also firmly grounded in contemporary concerns. It examines the psychological effects of social media and identity labelling, the dark side of individuality expressed through loneliness and self-doubt, and the growing pressure to compare ourselves with others. In a chapter on artificial intelligence, Nicholson argues that individuality may be the ultimate human advantage, the one quality that cannot be automated or predicted.
Published by Hogan Press, part of Hogan Assessments, the book will reach a global audience of psychologists, leaders, and practitioners, as well as general readers. Launch events are planned for London and New York later this year.
At its heart, Unique You is a book about connection. If we can never fully know ourselves or one another, Nicholson argues, then connection becomes not optional, but essential. In an era of unprecedented technological change, the book makes a compelling case that understanding individuality is not a luxury, but a necessity.