Exponential Organizations

By: Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest, Michael S. Malone, Peter H. Diamandis - foreword and afterword

Narrated by: Kevin Young

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

In business, performance is key. In performance, how you organize can be the key to growth. In the past five years, the business world has seen the birth of a new breed of company - the Exponential Organization - that has revolutionized how a company can accelerate its growth by using technology. An ExO can eliminate the incremental, linear way traditional companies get bigger, leveraging assets like community, big data, algorithms, and new technology into achieving performance benchmarks 10 times better than its peers. Three luminaries of the business world - Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest, and Mike Malone - have researched this phenomenon and documented 10 characteristics of Exponential Organizations. Here, in Exponential Organizations, they walk the listener through how any company, from a startup to a multinational, can become an ExO, streamline its performance, and grow to the next level.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2014 Salim Ismail (P)2015 Audible Inc.

Critic Reviews

"Frost & Sullivan's 2014 Growth, Innovation, and Leadership Book of the Year Exponential Organizations should be required reading for anyone interested in the ways exponential technologies are reinventing best practices in business." (Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google)

" Exponential Organizations is the most pivotal book in its class. Salim examines the future of organizations and offers readers his insights on the concept of Exponential Organizations because he himself embodies the strategy, structure, culture, processes, and systems of this new breed of company." (John Hagel, The Center for the Edge)

Not a revelation

The key points from the book are SCALE and IDEAS:

S: staff on demand
C: community & crowd
A: algorithms
L: leveraged assets
E: engagement

I: interfaces
D: dashboards
E: experimentation
A: autonomy
S: social technologies

The book went through most of the elements superficially by referring to some well known examples, such as Netflix's contest for a better recommendation algorithm. While the grand prize money was substantial ($1,000,000), the winner was able to beat Netflix's algorithm by over 10%. There were over 20,000 teams working on this problem. If Netflix spent the money internally trying to improve its algorithm, it probably would not have gotten such impressive results.

If you follow the news on technology, much of the information in the book is not a revelation.

26 of 28 people found this review helpful

Good info, but long and drawn out, awful narrator

There's a lot of good info, but narrator sounds like a GPS robot after having a stroke. He actually had a pleasant voice, but his he's constantly pausing in awkward, unnecessary places. Distracting to the point that I stopped listening.

As far as content, there are some great examples and salient points, but Bold by Peter Diamandis is a better xo primer.

14 of 16 people found this review helpful

Schlock, Read Weirdly

Would you try another book from the authors and/or Kevin Young?

I read a decent number of business books. This one seems second hand. It's like the authors read some business books, and then wrote a business book about the business books they read. It's filled with buzzwords and surface-level understanding. I believe the themes are actually right and true, there was just a big lack of depth.

Would you be willing to try another one of Kevin Young’s performances?

This performer has a very strange cadence and style of pronunciation. Quite off-putting. It definitely adds to the feeling of the book being full of poop.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Very insightful listen.

If you're a business owner or thinking about business this book is for you. This will open your eyes to the rapidly shifting world

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

eyes opening

this is for me an eyes opening, it make me realize the speed of things to come.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Extraordinary insights

This book delivers a sweeping collection of extraordinary insights into phenomena underpinning major disruptive influences in the world of business. The diversity and magnitude of these influences will have you reaching for the whiteboard pen in an attempt both to make sense of it all and then to strategise the opportunities you spot. And then putting it down again until you can get your head around the implications of it all. I've just finished my first run through and know that I'm going to read it again right away. My only criticism would be that it would be great to have a one hour version for the second time around :-)

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Inspiring & Informative

This is an excellent book. It is a how-to for entrepreneurs wanting to utilize exponential technologies to start or grow businesses that can truly change the world... So, read/listen to the book, come up with a business idea and follow the guidelines laid-out in the book... Then, you just need to "get busy"!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Reality Check

Provides iinsight into what each of us needs to be aware of and consider as we take future actions.. A reality check.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Thoughtful and Needed

Great book. There's a lot of deep content here, and the authors packaged it well.

My only criticism comes near the very end, where they discuss the future of HR using genomics, chemical sensors, etc. to fit individuals to jobs "objectively". Employees would then monitor their personalities and social credit in order to optimize for job placement.

Two points :

1. the act of building such a system sounds downright dystopian when taken to its end.

2. choosing to create such a world is itself a value judgement on the type of world that SHOULD exist, and as such, is inherently subjective. Abdication of personal responsibility to "market trends" is not an excuse. What is not mentioned here is the need for governments everywhere to sometimes control exponential trends for the good of the markets and employees that make them up.

Criticism aside, this is an excellent book and well worth the read for business leaders and laymen alike.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Tons of good information.

Lots of useful information for using data driven growth and decisions. Highly recommended for any business touched by digitized products or services.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Great content, dreadful narration

Would you try another book written by the authors or narrated by Kevin Young?

Salim Ismail is a genius. The narration, however, is awful. It ruins what should be an incredibly interesting read. It sounds like it's being read by a robot. Not suitable for a UK audience (or anyone with hearing)

Would you be willing to try another one of Kevin Young’s performances?

No.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. I gave up after one chapter. Shame, Ismail deserves better!

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Very Interesting

Found this very interesting and useful in my career. Great insights and the recording was good.

Narrator is dreadful

He speaks soooo slow it is anoying. Need to listen to the book at 1.5x and then the voice is not natural.

amazing book with great examples based on research

great research very diverse. details of real case studies and success stories. will definitely be rereading it.

A fantastic guide to company planning of the future

Well structured and straight forward way to think about company success in the 21st century!

Even though it's a few years old the lessons still hold true and can be applied across a range of industries.