An Exponential Organization (ExO) is one whose impact (or output) is disproportionally large — at least 10x larger — compared to its peers because of the use of new organizational techniques that leverage accelerating technologies.

Trust Beats Control and Open Beats Closed As we saw with Valve software, autonomy can be a powerful motivator in the age of the Exponential Organization. The Millennial generation is naturally independent, digitally native and resistant to top-down control and hierarchies. To take full advantage of this new workforce and hang on to top talent, companies must embrace an open environment. Google has done just that. As we outlined in Chapter Four, its Objectives and Key Results (OKR) system is fully transparent across the company. Any Googler can look up the OKRs of other colleagues and teams to see what they're trying to achieve and how successful they've been in the past. Such transparency takes a considerable amount of cultural and organizational courage, but Google has found that the openness it engenders is worth any discomfort.

TED: «Ideas dignas de difundir». • Google: «Organizar la información mundial». • Fundación X Prize: «Conseguir avances radicales para beneficio de la humanidad». • Quirky: «Haz la invención accesible». • Singularity University: «Impactar positivamente en mil millones de personas». A primera vista, puede parecer que estas declaraciones se alinean con la tendencia de los últimos años de reescribir las declaraciones corporativas para que sean más cortas, más simples y más generales. Aunque, si las analizamos de cerca, notarás que cada una de estas declaraciones tiene también grandes aspiraciones.

Martin Seligman, un líder experto en psicología positiva, distingue entre tres estados de felicidad: la vida placentera (hedonista, superficial), la buena vida (familia y amigos) y la vida con sentido (encontrar un propósito, trascender el ego, trabajar por un bien mayor). Las investigaciones muestran que la generación del Milenio — la de los nacidos entre 1984 y 2002 — muestra cierta orientación a buscar significado y propósito en sus vidas.4 A lo largo y ancho del mundo, sus aspiraciones son cada vez mayores y, de tal modo, se sienten atraídos como clientes, empleados e inversores a organizaciones con iguales aspiraciones

Non-ownership, then, is the key to owning the future — except, of course, when it comes to scarce resources and assets. As noted above, Tesla owns its own factories and Amazon its own warehouses. When the asset in question is rare or extremely scarce, then ownership is a better option. But if your asset is information-based or commoditized at all, then accessing is better than possessing.

renowned consulting firm McKinsey & Company advised AT&T not to enter the mobile telephone business, predicting there would be fewer than one million cellular phones in use by 2000. In fact, by 2000, there were one hundred million mobile phones. Not only was McKinsey's prediction off by 99 percent, its recommendation also resulted in AT&T missing out on one of the biggest business opportunities of modern times.

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In his book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Kurzweil identified a hugely important and fundamental property of technology: when you shift to an information-based environment, the pace of development jumps onto an exponential growth path and price/performance doubles every year or two.