In just over forty years since Gates and Allen plotted to put a computer in every home, the world has become massively digitized. Instead of a single computer in every house, there’s a computer in every pocket, wrist, kitchen, bathroom, electronic device, and TV. The Internet of Things (IoT) will connect nearly everything in the future. In fact, it is predicted there will be 30 to 75 billion IoT connected devices by 2025.

Examples of this include artificial intelligence (AI) powered voice-activated bots in our homes; sensors that record our every move; drones that deliver packages; robots that automatically order groceries, and networks of autonomous vehicles at our disposal. All these exponential technologies have become reality thanks to digitization and disruption of the norm. Digital transformation has forced a new norm. The Emerging Technologies Stack shares a viewpoint of the technologies coming to market over the next 10-25 years. As we look out into the future, the timeline may shift, yet innovators are working on every one of these technologies and they all have implications for nearly every industry on this planet.

As Singularity University explains, “Exponential technologies are those which are rapidly accelerating, shaping major industries, and all aspects of our lives.”48 The foundations of exponential technologies are built on computing, networks, search, email, social, and video. The next layer that has accelerated change even more includes AI, data, cloud, mobile, and internet of things (IoT). All technologies that have become pervasive in this century. Thereafter, we move into science fiction with blockchain, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 3D printing, autonomous cars, drones, and robotics. As new exponential technologies are invented, they begin to stack onto each other, building off the layer beneath it, and thus compounding both their power and impact. This continues to accelerate as each of these ideas (and more) are built on top of each other.

Digitization continues to change how we do everything. People take digital pictures and video of nearly everything and put them online. Arguments can be sorted out with a Google search. Everybody has access to somebody’s Netflix account with infinite entertainment on demand. Amazon Prime has orders at your door in one hour. Grandma has an iPhone, and your youngest cousin just taught her how to use emojis and Snapchat. Your grandpar- ents even use Facebook, and now order delivery meals through apps like Door Dash, Grub Hub and UberEATS.

To better understand exponential growth, here’s a short story. A little girl is negotiating her allowance with her parents. “Just pay me a penny and double my pay every week.” Sounds easy enough. At first glance, this sounds like a great deal.

By week four, she’s only making eight cents a week. Her parents still feel like it’s a good deal. After two months, she’s making $2.56 a week. In six months, she’s making $335,544.32 a week, and after one year, her earnings are equal to the GDP of the United States of America. She accepts Venmo, PayPal, or Apple Pay.

Exponential growth is a game changer.

Currently, five Exponential Organizations (ExOs) have risen to the top of the technology world in the western hemisphere and have become global brands in the process: Facebook, Apple, Google (Alphabet Inc.), Microsoft, and Amazon. Globally, people use or interact with these companies in some way every day. Salim Ismail first outlined ExOs in his book Exponential Organizations when he noticed similarities between companies that grew 10x, Unicorns (startups with $1 billion-dollar valuations), and the leading technology companies in the world.37 As we dive deeper into exponential theory, we will examine these ExOs more closely.

In his work, Salim Ismail defined ExOs as companies that are ten times larger than peer companies, with four or more specific internal or external attributes (as defined below), and a Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP). The MTP functions as the “why,” the motivation for why a company operates. Simon Sinek has made a living helping people think about their why. This philosophy is driving purpose-driven growth companies and a movement towards Environmental, Societal, and Governmental (ESG) companies making an impact. An MTP often describes the ExOs vision for a better future for the industry, the community, and the world at large.

From Salim Ismail’s book Exponential Organizations, here are the five internal and five external attributes of an exponential organization using the acronyms IDEAS and SCALE.38

Internal (IDEAS):
• Interfaces: ExOs have very customized processes for how they interface with customers and other organizations.
• Dashboards: A real-time, adaptable dashboard with all essential company and employee metrics, accessible to everyone in the organization.

·  Experimentation: Implementation of the Lean Startup methodology of testing assumptions and constantly experimenting with controlled risks.

·  Autonomy: Self-organizing, multidisciplinary teams operating with decentralized authority.

·  Social Technologies: Social technologies, or collaborative technologies, allow organizations to manage real-time communication among all employees.

External (SCALE):

·  Staff on Demand: Minimize full-time staff and outsource tasks. Uber uses staff on demand when they incentivize drivers to go online during busy times.

·  Community and Crowd: If we build communities and we do things in public, we don’t have to find the right people—they find us.

·  Algorithms: ExOs leverage data and algorithms to scale in ways that were not possible just five or ten years ago.

·  Leveraged Assets: Hold on to what’s critical. Outsource everything else. Access not ownership.

·  Engagement: Enabling collaborative human behavior (social behavior) to engineer the results we want from our community.

Leaders use these internal and external attributes to create a compounding effect, where change accelerates, producing more efficient processes, strategies, technologies, and organizations. For example, with the compounding effect, a negligible improvement can be dramatic over time. A 1% improvement everyday compounds into a 37x improvement after one year. IDEAS and SCALE pay off in the long run, though in the short term, none of these attributes are likely to make a noticeable difference. Using these attributes, ExOs like Facebook, Apple, Google (Alphabet Inc.), Microsoft, and Amazon have grown to be very BIG companies, with influence larger than governments. New companies like Uber, Airbnb, Netflix and others leverage these principles to grow faster than other companies, taking over their industries in a short period of time. They are likely to be the giant companies of tomorrow.

The Hardwired Brain

Innovation is literally hardwired into humans.

Human DNA has evolved over time and helps produce generations stronger than the previous ones, slowly adapting to the environment around it. Our immune systems develop anti- bodies to protect us from viruses and diseases. Yet, our brain is ten thousand years old and still seeking environmental signals to know if we should fight or flight or freeze so we don’t get eaten by a lion on the savanna. Our amygdala, which controls this function, is a collection of cells located near the base of the brain and is our first environmental filter. Thus, our tool kit that our ancestry relied on still drives our subconscious.

Scientists who study epigenetics—how DNA expression changes over time without physically altering—understand that generational trauma affects human instincts. Humans know to run when a lion approaches, as fight or freeze are less effective. If the goal is preserving one’s life, we inherently know this and relive the experience as a déjà vu over and over again subconsciously. The executive decision making of the prefrontal cortex is basically powered off. We repeat many of our actions until we can break the cycle by bypassing the amygdala’s instinct.

The hardwired brain runs automatically. This is what Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman describes as two separate systems of mental processing in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. System One is fast, unconscious, effort- less, and automatic. System One makes quick decisions, which are often mental shortcuts we’ve created through evolution, or thinking we’ve been in the situation before. System Two, however, is slow, deliberate, conscious, effortful, and controlled.31 The key to innovation is using System Two more effectively through mental models, philosophy, reading, case studies, and learning how others handle the situation. If System One takes over in a crisis, we have fewer options to respond. There is a lack of creativity when the brain is caught in a state of trauma, a paradox of choice, analysis paralysis, and/or the left-brain analytical mode has taken over automatically.

At the same time, trauma, friction, and conflict force innovation. For example, the coronavirus pandemic may be the big- gest digital transformation in history, outperforming any other long-term corporate digital transformation initiative in just a few months. The pandemic forced companies to transform due to organizational stress, and they quickly shifted to remote working, video conferencing, digital sales, and companies sought technology solutions for nearly everything. Crisis often invigorates innovation.

The VUCA world

The United States Army and its leaders were troubled: in 1987, the Cold War imploded in Afghanistan into a theater of disillusionment. Fueled by the opposing USSR’s desire to conquer the Afghan nation and spread communism, Afghanistan was figuratively torn in two and the thirteen-year civil war that ensued claimed more than 1.5 million lives.24 Despite the death toll, neither the Soviet Army nor the U.S.-backed mujahideen was closer to victory. The situation was so out of control that the U.S. Army had to come up with a new term to describe it: VUCA.

·  Volatility: a tendency to change quickly and unpredictably.

·  Uncertainty: doubt, with no certainty.

·  Complexity: the multiple forces compounding an issue; the confusion inhibiting an organization.

·  Ambiguity: the loss of reality; disconnection to cause-and-effect.

The volatility in Afghanistan required military leaders to create a shared vision that extended beyond the immediate chaos into the future of what the country could be. During times of uncertainty, leaders sought new levels of understanding of the Afghan people and their needs in order to properly assess the situation and move forward. This meant better listening, empathy, and accepting critical feedback from those most affected by the civil war. The complexity of the war expanded leaders’ horizons by forcing them to rethink aspects they might previously have ignored, like the difficult combat terrain or the large number of civilians in between them and the enemy. Leaders needed to create clarity in the complexity. Lastly, ambiguity forced military leaders to be agile and flexible, so that they could adapt to the unpredictable nature of the changing war. The four facets of VUCA guide military and exponential leaders alike by focusing on traits necessary for success in today’s world.

Leaders can use the VUCA mental model to address the changing landscape of the digital world, and better understand the implications of their decisions. To plan for the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous landscape of the digital world, we adopt a new VUCA mental model popularized by Bob Johansen—to seek vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.25

With the new VUCA mental model, leaders seek:

·  Vision: establish a clear massive transformative purpose and...

·  Understanding: invoke continuous communication, empathy, and active listening, with an emphasis on diversity and data to...

·  Clarity: simplify, create expectations, and educate as we seek to...

·  Agility: experiment, fail, learn, and repeat.

Using VUCA to identify and solve a problem is the first step in thinking big and leveraging exponential theory. Innovation, after all, is the process of solving problems and/or incrementally improving what already exists. When there’s a problem, humans innovate. When there is an opportunity to improve something, we innovate. Innovation accelerates life. Innovation demands new leadership. Leaders need to push into the unknown-learning, making mistakes, challenging the status quo, being lean, iterative and agile, creating the needed change in the world. This is an open call for the new VUCA Leadership. Leaders that move at light speed. Leaders that think big. Leaders who can solve big problems.

As leaders seek to leverage technology, they must start to become aware of the impact on other parts of the ecosystem. This leads to introducing a new rule in leadership:

The Rhodium Rule:

‘Think about the entire ecosystem.”

Dating back to before biblical times, the Golden Rule was a moral rule to “Treat others the way you want to be treated your- self.” Fast forward to today, current culture would demand the Platinum Rule which states, “Treat people the way they want to be treated.” Exponential theory introduces the Rhodium Rule, “Think about the entire ecosystem.” Rhodium is the most expensive metal in the world and can be found in platinum, so Rhodium reinforces the Platinum Rule, yet introduces a value that aligns all the powers of exponential theory in a simple way.

Which should we cover first, the good news or the bad news?

The good news: the future is bright. The bad news: the present is not. Between human and civil rights issues, recovering from a pandemic, and a deteriorating planet, the clock looks like it is running out on us. Whether we recognize it or not, humans are at a critical point in their existence: adaptation or extinction.

Through my innovation journey to nearly every corner of Earth, I learned these seven universal truths. I hope you can reflect on them through the stories here within.

1. We are always right. To think is to create. Your perception is your reality.
2. We are our habits. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Focusing on personal habits and putting in the work will help us reach our goals.
3. Attitude is everything. It’s not what happens to us, it’s how we respond.
4. What we resist persists. Let it go! Forgive.
5. The goal is not the end. The journey is the reward. Enjoythe process.
6. Enjoy the moment. Now is all we’ve got. Be present.
7. We are all one. Love unconditionally.