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

by Salim Ismail

Now, in 2014, we are hard-pressed to identify any industry that hasn’t been fundamentally disrupted. And not just businesses, but jobs as well. As David Rose, a leading angel investor and founder of Gust, says, “Every single job function we can identify is being fundamentally transformed.” Even “old” industries such as construction are in the throes of disruption. Mike Halsall, a construction company executive, told us that significant disruptions to his industry include: Increased collaboration (making an opaque industry more transparent and substantially more efficient) Ever-more sophisticated design software and visualization 3D printing Halsall estimates that the sum of these disruptions could reduce the number of people working in construction by more than 25 percent within ten years. (The construction industry, by the way, represents a $4.7 trillion industry annually.) In the corporate travel industry, Russ Howell, EVP of Global Technology at BCD Travel, notes that 50 percent of the transactions at telephone-based call centers moved to the Internet in less than a decade. Furthermore, he expects 50 percent of those to move to mobile smartphones within three years. As this new information-based paradigm causes the very metabolism of the world to heat up, we’re increasingly feeling its macroeconomic impact. For example, the cheapest 3D printers now cost only $100, which means that within five years or so most of us will be able to afford 3D printers to fabricate toys, c...