"Business is, essentially, our civilization," Luce said, "for it is the essential characteristic of our times".
But I wondered if it had the most essential characteristic of all.
The essential characteristic of a public good is that everyone benefits from it even if not everyone pays for it.
Despite her extensive planning, she wanted the pieces to retain an essential characteristic of real things: spontaneity.
Doing things for one another is, in fact, an essential characteristic of a human community.
This essential characteristic of hiding and revealing personalities or moods is common to all masks.
As van Breda Kolff will point out, for example, Bradley has "a great reverse pivot," and this is an essential characteristic of a one-on-one specialist.
He will say that "The digital age has made transparency an irresistible, unstoppable force," and that open data "will be the essential characteristic of future public policy".
The other essential characteristic of Vine, because it is part of Twitter and postable on Facebook, is that videos are streamed, or screened, within one's feed.
An essential characteristic of business enterprise is that not all future developments can be foreseen or insured against.
Philippe Ariès, in "The Hour of Our Death," points out that the essential characteristic of death as it appears in the "Chanson de Roland" is that the death, even if sudden or accidental, "gives advance warning of its arrival".
