—Exponential Thinking Is The New Norm

An excellent article by Mark Bonchek of SHIFTthinking did precisely that.

Had I been thinking too small? Too linearly? Too safe? Yes. Yes. And yes. 

But what is exponential thinking, and why do most struggle to apply. 

"If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." 

Henry Ford truly believed this, yet he didn't reinvent the wheel from scratch [if you excuse the pun] but merely caught the early car manufacturing startup wave that originated in Germany and many other countries around the same time. 

Even before the internet and globalization–innovations spread fast!

Linear is how we’re taught. Education provides knowledge of the known. We then pivot on two axes. 

1. Discovering the unknown

2. Leveraging the known

If we side-step number one by reserving the discovery of unknowns to the Einstein's, Curie's, and Bell's–we now focus on the leverage of the known.

Leverage is the mental model that separates exponential thinking from linear thinking. The valley where the best startups reside!

The stock market is often called a short-term voting machine but a long-term weighing machine.

It encourages incremental profit increases and predictability—linear forays from the installed base.

Exponential thinking adopts a compounding approach. If linear works in an–if this-then that manner. Exponential leads from an–if this, then that, this and these. 

Linear is targeting 10% growth per annum.

Exponential targets–10% growth per month!! 

The result is a land of plenty from the sowing of exponential seeds.

The recent product roadmap presentation by Spotify shows this thinking up close and personal.

Even at the scale at which they operate–exponential thinking has not diminished from their early startup days of disrupting the linear music industry.

Not content with just owning the music streaming world–they plan to command the entire audio space–music, podcasts, and whatever else comes into airplay.

Clubhouse? Maybe?

The plan is not to get better at music–but to get better at audio! To own the world's ears!

Startups benefit from not knowing the rules of the game and reinventing a beautiful non-linear game.