We are living in one of the most exhilarating times in human history. A time of new discoveries and fast changes unlike any other era. What makes this time particularly unique is that these changes are happening at a rate that is difficult for our brains to comprehend, represented graphically by a mathematical expression that is not found often in nature: the exponential curve. Our minds have been conditioned to think of growth and change in linear terms because that is what we are familiar with. Think about how we age, one year at a time. Think about how a tree grows as new branches sprout, slowly and predictably. We are not used to seeing situations where things change gradually, then suddenly at unexpected speed.
To illustrate the point, let’s borrow from the famous fable of the origin of the game of chess. Legend has it that the creator of chess presented it as a gift to an emperor in India. The emperor was so impressed with the ingenuity of the game that he felt compelled to compensate the man and asked him what he would like to receive as his reward. The man humbly responded:
“Oh emperor, my wishes are simple. I only wish for this. Give me one grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two grains for the next square, four for the next, eight for the next and so on for all 64 squares, with each square having double the number of grains as the square before.”
The emperor was astounded that this ingenious man only wanted a few grains of rice as his reward for such a wonderful game. Without much thought, he granted the man his wishes. It wasn’t until sometime later that his treasurer came back and advised the emperor that it would be impossible to pay the man the quantity requested, as the amount of rice added up to an astronomical amount, far more than his empire could produce in many, many centuries.
How could the emperor be so easily deceived? Simple. He was thinking linearly like most of us often do, while the ingenious man understood and used the power of the exponential curve. And herein lies the threat, or the opportunity, depending on your point of view and the time horizon in which you see it. Humans tend to think linearly, but the technology changes we are experiencing now follow an exponential curve.
Gerd Leonhard, a regarded futurist, is known for saying that technology is exponential, but humans are not. His advice: Don’t try to compete with the machines. Instead, focus on doing the things that are inherently human, and that the machines cannot copy, like being creative and compassionate.
A New Era is Born
The times we are living in now are unlike any other before. This new era is characterized by changes that first appear to be gradual, but that suddenly and unexpectedly become explosive. We call it the Exponential Era.
To understand how exponential growth can be deceivingly slow at first, but then suddenly explodes, see the simulation below of filling Lake Michigan with water using an exponential curve. This was used to illustrate how computers can achieve the same computational power of the human brain following Moore’s law of doubling computational capacity every 18 months. Notice how it starts slowly with a small blue dot on the south end of the lake, then progresses gradually, and suddenly in the last few doublings, fills the lake at the blink of an eye:
According to the World Economic Forum there has been no historic precedent to this current phenomena, which is also referred to as the 4thIndustrial Revolution, in terms of its velocity, scope, or impact on everything in our lives. You would have to go back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s to see just three significant innovation platforms come together over several decades: Electricity, the telephone and the internal combustion engine.
Today there are at least ten of these platforms, depending on how you categorize them, that have surfaced in the last few years or decades: DNA Sequencing, Nanotechnology, Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, 3D Printing, Energy Storage, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain Technology, Augmented Reality, and the Next Generation Internet. The latter contains several sub-components such as Mobile Payment, Internet of Things, Online-to-Offline (O2O) and 5G.
These platforms are generating multi-trillion-dollar economies, and their convergence and combinatorial power are spawning ever increasing innovation and economic opportunities and threats. For example, today we see China leapfrogging to modern technologies like O2O, machine learning and mobile payment, the latter currently amounting to 24 trillion dollars, almost twice the size of their GDP. When these synergistic technologies with multi-trillion-dollar scope start converging and feeding on each other as we see in China, the explosive nature of the Exponential Era becomes frighteningly obvious.
Strategies for the Exponential Era
All these explosive changes and mega platforms seem a little daunting and even scary. How are we going to keep up? How are individuals and organizations to prepare for changes of such magnitude and impact? How can we take advantage of the opportunities and thwart the threats facing us in the Exponential Era?
Here are 7 strategies that can help you navigate through these turbulent times:..
