Exponential Organizations 2.0: A Must for Entrepreneurs and Leaders

I have just finished reading the book Exponential Organizations 2.0, an update of the 2014 book. Despite my initial skepticism, I must admit that I really liked it.

The SCALE and IDEAS Attributes

This book describes the attributes that companies which perform 10x better than others in their sector usually have. Through easy-to-remember acronyms: SCALE and IDEAS, they explain each of these attributes and how they contribute to exponential success.

SCALE refers to:

• Staff on Demand
• Community & Crowd
• Algorithms
• Leveraged Assets
• Engagement

IDEAS refers to:

• Interfaces
• Dashboards
• Experimentation
• Autonomy
• Social Technologies

Key Concepts: MTP and Moonshot

The concepts of Massive Transformation Purpose (MTP) and Moonshot are particularly notable. Basically, they suggest that we should establish a utopian or aspirational purpose and have a revolutionary flagship project. Taking SpaceX as an example, their MTP would be to make humans an interplanetary species and their moonshot is to bring humans to Mars. The MTP is the cornerstone of everything, and we should turn to it when we are unclear about the direction.

The June 2023 Edition

In this June 2023 edition, I appreciate the inclusion of the great AI revolution and how businesses must adapt to it to survive. In addition, the book proposes a series of recommended steps to create your ExO (Exponential Organization). I quite liked these steps because, although I am a strong supporter of Eric Ries’s Lean Startup method, I think that things move at such a fast pace that this method falls short. I believe the attributes of ExOs complement or redefine the way of doing business, whether it is an exponential organization or a company whose lifespan is months, profitable for a while and then, disappear.

Final Thoughts

At first, I misunderstood the concept of abundance. Clearly, there is no abundance of certain physical elements, but in the digital and other services, the cost tends to be marginal.

In summary, this book is a must for all those entrepreneurs, businesspeople, managers, or simply those curious in the business world. Highly recommended.

My next read: Abundance.