Exponential Organizations and their recipe for Success

Exponential Organizations, what is their recipe for success
Have you ever ponder why new companies like Waze, Instagram, Facebook, Uber and others are so profitable and successful in a short period of time. Have you ever thought why for instance, Waze with less than one hundred employees was acquired by Google in 2013 for $1.1 Billion, given that it did not own any infrastructure, hardware and huge employee base, as matter of fact they only had less than one hundred employees. Why Uber worth $17 billion in valuation with not having one car of its own. And why at the same time big companies with vast resources and astounding investments in their products and people are envious to these companies with explosive growth and superb valuation only in few years. Well, according to Salim Ismail , the author “ Exponential Organization “ , these fast growing companies are changing the playing field and looking at growth and profitability from different angles , In summary they are leveraging the below concepts and platforms to achieve faster and better results that their older competitors with deep pockets and huge infrastructure cost .

? Leveraging Cloud technology, with the inception of AWS by Amazon six years ago , many of these exponential organizations are taking advantage of cloud and accomplishing their goals faster and cheaper
? Pulling the information from various devices/sources that are already on smartphone, databases, etc. They add intelligence to the data and convert it into actionable information.
? Co -creation with their customers, partners, and other sources. They are not insulated from their ecosystem and are eager to connect outside their perimeter with other players and ultimately reach to their customers
? Very thin organization without heavy investment in infrastructure and hardware.
? Flat organizations with few people , leveraging staff on demand rather than full time employees and organizational layer with few people and little bureaucracy
? Focus on innovation and create compelling value proposition and will convert the prospects to a customer without hesitation
? Creation of wow factor , that other competitors have failed to see or execute

Let’s delve into this further, in many traditional organization we have created Product Development, usually this group has deep funding and they are mandated with new functionalities and innovation (they also claim they have the pulse of the market and customers) Most of them use traditional waterfall product development starting with, Idea generation, design, prototype, built, test, commercializing and finally product launch. By the time they go through all phases and communication complexities with various organization like Technology , Marketing , Legal and Compliance , HR , etc., ( not to mention , committees , getting approval from various key stakeholders , political game playing, negotiations , and greasing the squeaky wheel) it takes months , sometimes years to launch a product. One organization that I worked for, took an average of twenty six to thirty eight months to deliver a product. Just imagine the level of effort, coordination, investment that goes into this, as well as opportunity cost. By the time the product is ready to launch the market has changed and the ROI is no longer valid.

The new mentality utilized by these fast and focused organizations eradicates traditional approach to product and technology launch, they bring their customers and partners into ideation and value generation phase of development , they do not look for perfect product launch, they iterate with their partners till they are satisfied that product is “ good enough for launch “ . At the same time, they aim for Wow factor by getting into the space that others have missed (blue Ocean thinking). They leverage cloud, ubiquitous information, and staff on demand to quickly develop the product as fast as possible without heavy investment in technology and staffing. They surprise the market and competitors and force the competition with “wow, what just happed “surprises. They are the master of connecting the dots and creating new canvas. And that requires out of box thinking and clear understanding of new ecosystem. These companies continually ask themselves two fundamental questions
? Why do we exist?
? What will happen if we go away?
? What true value we bring to the market that differentiate us
? How do we develop products or services in a rapid, sustainable and cheapest way that add to customer loyalty but then increase our profit by 10X and higher .

If you continually doing the same thing, it is insane to expect different results.