Exponential Organizations

New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (and What to Do About It)

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

eyes opening

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

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 :-)

Never Lonely Again

Yea I thought I couldn’t face another day this book rescued me. Gives our lives Holy reason to organize to teach to love life again..
oh yea lost now found....words that are thought provoking Greatness & Americanizing coming back again finally,

Riveting

Loved it. Highly recommended to new entrepreneurs. Existing businesses should take note. Your survival might depend on it.

The Most revolutionary serendipity of the age

It was very easy to understand the content by this way. really transform the point of view of how the trend is conducting the future

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"!

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!

Some interesting ideas, a lot of hyperbole

Inspiring, but felt a bit unsubstantiated, jumped around too much to get deeper insight. Didn't make it all the way through. But a really useful premise and observation about commonalities among these companies are intriguing.

Seminal for C suite member but beware of fallacious economics near the end

Transformative book, I felt ashamed and behind reading this is in 2019 as CEO but all predictions actualise by the day and the book does a good job painting it clear as day. Vouching for Rifkin’s follies at the end was a spit in the mouth to the economically literate audience of this book though. Another thing, you will need the physical book to take away the important findings and checklists.

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.

Dated

Things have moved on since 2015, I hoped this book might hold some relevance in the 2020s

The best book I read on exponential thinking !

Love it! Listening second time now, great book ever written by Salim. Must read if you want to survive in this and next decade of exponential thinking and growth !!

existential Exponential growth

Clear and easy to follow. I enjoyed that is full of examples so it helps understanding the concepts

Very detailed and you really need to concentrate

Whilst I found some of the concepts in this book interesting, I found it a really hard book to listen to as the level of detail was (to my mind) too much. I therefore felt I really needed to actively listen all the time to make sure I could pick out the key points from within the detail

Bit dated now but still enlightening.

Loved it, whether you're staring a regular or online business you should definitely listen and apply what is in this book.

Unnatural narration

This book was recommended to me by a colleague and I decided to buy the audiobook version.
The audio sounds rather unnatural, as if a robot was reading it and it has a monotonous tone that made me disconnect several times.
The content is ok, in this fast paced world we live in it's starting to become a tad outdated