Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)

by Salim Ismail

To achieve this scalability, new ExO organizations such as Waze are turning the traditional organization inside out. Rather than owning assets or workforces and incrementally seeing a return on those assets, ExOs leverage external resources to achieve their objectives. For example, they maintain a very small core of employees and facilities, allowing enormous flexibility as margins soar. They enlist their customers and leverage offline and online communities in everything from product design to application development. They float atop the existing and emerging infrastructure rather than trying to own it. And they grow at incredible rates precisely because they aren’t dedicated to owning their market, but rather to enlisting it to their purposes. A great example is Medium, which is disrupting the magazine business by relying on its users to provide long-form articles.