A World of ExOs

Welcome to the Exponential world of business. It is a place where neither age nor size nor reputation nor even current sales guarantees that you will be around tomorrow. On the other hand, it is also a place where if you can build an organization that is sufficiently scalable, fast-moving, and smart, you may enjoy success—exponential success—to a degree never before imaginable. And all with far fewer resources and in far less time than the successful businesses of previous decades. 

We have entered the age of billion-dollar startups and trillion-dollar corporations, where the best companies and institutions move at seemingly light speed. If you haven’t transitioned into an Exponential Organization, it will not only seem as though your competition is racing away from you, but worse, that you are sliding backwards into oblivion. 

Enormous waves of creative destruction have been unleashed. More than half of the companies that made up the Fortune 500 in 2000 have vanished. Giants like Global Crossing, Chrysler, GM, Brookstone, The Limited, Sears, and Toys “R” Us have all fallen by the wayside via bankruptcy, acquisition, or shutdown.

A hundred years ago, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company was 67 years. Today, it’s about 15 years. And it’s going to get even shorter as these corporations aren’t just forced to compete with but are annihilated—seemingly overnight—by a new breed of business that harnesses the power of exponential technologies, from AI and data mining to synthetic biology, blockchain, and robotics. The founders of those new companies will become the leaders of the world’s economy for the foreseeable future. Even governments will come to them on bended knees.