We live in frighteningly exciting times. The younger generation butting heads with their elders about the way the world should be moving. Each have their own self-interest to fulfil. So how do we balance them?

We are currently in the midst of a massive paradigm shift in our life. We see the linear processes of “education -> get job -> get house -> have children” and it look less and less attractive as time goes on. We hear the old world creaking under the weight of trying to support so many living a dream that, frankly doesn’t exist any more.

We need earth shattering change, innovations and collaborations to fix the problems my peers and I face as a generation, but a linear mindset will not get us there. The linear business world is being ‘disrupted’ by the epoch of the exponential business, they grow faster, cost less and need fewer employees to gain the value FTSE 100 companies gained in 20 years, in only 2.

Now an explanation of what I mean by linear thinking. Linear thinking is the mind’s bread and butter. “How do I get from A to B,” “How long will that take,” “How many people will actually be reading this?” It’s what our mind has evolved over generations to do. Through the ages of the primordial soup and subsequent ages of fish and reptiles, our ancestors inherited beneficial characteristics that enabled their survival. One of which being to understand friend from foe and be able to anticipate their movements to plan exit strategies. This required these early brains to calculate complex linear functions of speed, distance and time in order to avoid predators and ultimately, live to pass on their genes. So its not unimaginable that our brains would follow the same basic framework with a few parts bolted on for emotional and memory processing. If you want more information on linear and polynomial functions check this out.

Exponential thinking however, challenges the very notion of this evolutionary precedent. Exponential functions, when taken to a high enough number, will ALWAYS beat a polynomial function despite any initial lead it may gain. Linear function’s fare even worse long term.

As you can see the exponential function wins out. 2^x being the exponent

It is nearly impossible to imagine the impact of exponential growth, we can see it in the speed a pathogen spread throughout a population but imagining it is an entirely different story. This is the cause of the disruption in the business world. The other companies operating in linear and inflexible models due to their financial inertia can’t see these companies that are leaner and better equipped coming and are usurped because of it. Look at the slow demise of Nokia, look at Woolworths. You could almost call this a macro-scale natural selection at work.

The biggest issue is, and pardon my speculation, that the speed of growth operating on a mathematical model our brain has not evolved to interpret continuously causes a cognitive dissonance with that which we are expecting; how often are the predictions of market analysts short by several orders of magnitude in our current economy. This cognitive dissonance, within reason, may be the key to understanding why and it extends to the entire population. No wonder parts of the population feel the need to reign it all in and return to a simpler time. It is evident in the rise of parties like UKIP and the right-wing policies of Labour and the Conservatives. We need a new way of understanding what’s going on here.

Bring in exponential thinking and exponential business. Companies are beginning to understand its importance now and are applying it now but innumerable tools that were only wild speculation 30 years ago have materialised so rapidly (and will have such an unprecedented impact on the way we do business) that a shift in the way people see the world and imagine a future is necessary in order for us to all survive in what will be a challenging but opportune age of humanity.

Look froward to seeing topics such as Universal Basic Income, Post-scarcity economics, Futurism, exponential technologies and more in the future.