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

by Salim Ismail

Let’s now examine the major characteristics of Exponential Organizations. Based on our research—which includes the top one hundred fastest growing startups worldwide over the last six years—we have identified common traits across all ExOs. They include a Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP), as well as ten other attributes that reflect the internal mechanisms and externalities they’re leveraging to achieve exponential growth. We use the acronym SCALE to reflect the five external attributes, and the acronym IDEAS for the five internal attributes. Not every ExO has all ten attributes but the more it has, the more scalable it tends to be. Our research indicates that a minimum of four implemented attributes will achieve the ExO label and have you accelerate away from your competition.