Understanding this curve can help avoid catastrophe.
Today’s world is defined by change. Advances in technology, consumer empowerment, and instant gratification are just some of the moving parts of life that are pushing us to a new reality. Change, at the speed of life, is the rallying cry of business and many aspects of society. And along the way, we also can hear the other cry of innovation: fail fast.
This idea of transformational speed in today’s technological word is often captured by a concept extracted from our forgotten books on math and science. The first and most common is linear growth. From marketing to our personal IRAs, this simple line is both easy to understand and to project into the future. A fixed percentage allows us to plan and establishes a clear benchmark for growth and success. For many, it’s math 101 and the basis for simple as well as complicated analytics.
But as we know, the world isn’t flat. It’s becoming an exponential world where change is a far cry from that linear dynamic. And that’s when we see the second concept from our old school textbook — exponential growth. In mathematics, exponential growth is something that grows at a rate proportional to its size. More simply stated, the larger a number gets, the faster it grows.
