Exponential Organizations

Name: Exponential Organizations
ISBN: 9787573907646

萨利姆·伊斯梅尔 / 迈克尔·马隆 / 尤里·范吉斯特 / 苏健Zhejiang Science and Technology Publishing House · ChinaSep 2023

4.1

Word count: 163K words
Chapters: 22
ISBN: 9787573907646

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Summary

The information-driven environment has fundamentally upended the world, yet traditional companies remain inflexible, clinging to linear thinking and suffering the consequences of linear growth models. Salim Ismail, visionary founding executive director and global ambassador of Singularity University, together with renowned American technology journalist Michael Malone and Yuri van Geest, founder of Singularity University Benelux, offers a definitive future guide for modern enterprises to achieve 10x growth amid upheaval—becoming an Exponential Organization.

How does an Exponential Organization differ from a linear one, and where does its advantage lie?

How can you tell whether your organization is an Exponential Organization?

What are the characteristics of an Exponential Organization, and how do they help a business achieve 10x growth?

How do you build an Exponential Organization from scratch?

How do you transform your organization into an Exponential Organization?

As an ordinary employee, what does exponential thinking mean for us?

Editor's review

This book turns “Exponential Organization” from a slogan into an operational framework for judgment. The three authors come from innovation education, technology journalism, and entrepreneurial practice, and their approach balances theoretical reasoning with case analysis, making it less demanding than a purely academic work. The most valuable part is its thorough explanation of the difference between linear and exponential thinking: why, given the same goal of growth, some organizations can leverage information to achieve tenfold leaps while most still stack resources step by step. The criteria and transformation paths it offers are especially instructive for team managers undergoing industry upheaval who cannot find a breakthrough. One caveat: most cases come from overseas technology and platform companies, so readers should adapt them to their own industry context rather than copying them directly. Read it with the question “Where is my organization stuck?” and check your organization against the feature lists as you go; you will gain far more than from a single cover-to-cover read.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Founders and senior executives of small and medium-sized enterprises seeking business breakthroughs
Mid-level managers responsible for strategy, innovation incubation, or organizational change
Entrepreneurs interested in platform business models and the logic of rapid growth
General professionals hoping to develop exponential thinking and broaden their perspectives

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting concrete industry playbooks and implementation templates
Practitioners in heavily regulated industries where growth cannot easily be scaled rapidly
Readers who prefer rigorous academic argumentation and empirical data research

Reading tips

Start with the chapters on the characteristics of Exponential Organizations, use the book’s checklist to assess your own organization, then return to the section on transformation paths.
After each case, write one page on how it resembles and differs from your own business, so you remember the conditions for transfer rather than just the story.
Read it with your team and hold a discussion around “Which single link should we change most?” to turn reading into action items.

About the publisher

Zhejiang Science and Technology Publishing House China · Founded in 1980

Zhejiang Science and Technology Publishing House is a comprehensive science and technology publisher known for academic monographs, applied technology titles and popular science books, with a focus on three areas: scholarship, popular science and science education. Judging from the books in the catalog, its publishing covers popular science, medicine, management, social psychology, Eastern philosophy and personal finance. It publishes works by overseas authors such as Douglas Hofstadter, Atul Gawande and Carlota Perez alongside Chinese writers including Liu Jian, Hu Hai, Wang Yifang and Peng Xiaohua. Representative titles include Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Being Mortal, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, A Short History of the Human Body (full-color illustrated edition), and Gawande's Better and Complications, spanning cognitive science, medical humanities and the social dimensions of technology. Its distinctive approach is to connect scholarship and the general reader through popular science, valuing both ideas and readability. As public information is limited, this profile is drawn only from the books in the catalog.

版权信息
指数商测试你所在公司的指数商是多少？
推荐序制胜未来的指数型组织
中文版序拥抱指数型组织的思维方式
引言指数型组织，撬动世界的新杠杆
第一部分指数型组织的前世今生
01 颠覆一切的信息技术
02 为什么诺基亚收购Navteq，而谷歌收购Waze
第二部分指数型组织的11个最强属性
03 宏大变革目标，指数型组织的最重要属性
04 指数型组织的5大外部属性（SCALE）
05 指数型组织的5大内部属性（IDEAS）
06 指数型组织形成的9大驱动因素
第三部分如何创建指数型组织
07 创建指数型组织的关键步骤
08 中型公司如何获得指数级成长
09 大型公司向指数型组织靠拢的4大策略
10 大型公司的“指数化”之路
11 “首席指数官”的诞生
结语指数型组织，彻底改变我们的工作和生活
后记
译者后记

FAQ

Will readers with no management experience gain from this book?

Yes, but with a different focus. Ordinary employees can focus on the section on what exponential thinking means for individual work and understand how concepts such as information leverage and external collaboration apply to daily tasks. However, much of the book addresses strategy and structure at the organizational level; without management experience, the transformation paths will feel somewhat abstract, so it is best to read the cases before the methods.

Are the book’s methods suitable for traditional manufacturing?

The framework originates in information-intensive industries, so applying it directly to traditional manufacturing is difficult. Still, its ideas about drawing on external resources, shortening feedback cycles, and replacing inventory with information remain useful. Readers should focus on principles rather than specific practices and make choices based on their industry’s asset structure and regulatory conditions.

How does this book differ from other growth books?

Its distinguishing feature is that it breaks “exponential” down into assessable characteristics and transformation steps rather than merely championing growth rates. It offers both conceptual clarification and a description of the path from linear to exponential organization, which readers can use for self-assessment. Compared with pure case collections, it is more like a diagnostic tool, best read while comparing it with your own organization.

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About the author

萨利姆·伊斯梅尔 Author

Salim Ismail is a Chinese-language author writing mainly on management, with two of his works currently included in the library catalogue. Public information is limited: his nationality, dates of birth and death, English name, and detailed career history are not recorded in the library, so little can be said about his personal background. Judging from his representative works, Exponential Organizations and Exponential Organizations: The 11 Strongest Attributes for Building a Unicorn Company, his writing focuses on the organizational forms and growth paths of modern enterprises, exploring how companies can achieve scaled expansion through exponential thinking in a rapidly changing technological environment. This subject matter belongs to the strand of management writing that emphasizes concepts and methods, with a style centered on distilling ideas and presenting frameworks, and is suited to readers interested in organizational innovation and entrepreneurial management. The similar titles of the two works indicate that the author has offered a sustained and concentrated discussion of the theme of "exponential organizations," giving him a degree of recognizability in management reading.

迈克尔·马隆 Author

Michael Malone is an author known for writing on management topics. Public information about him is limited, and details such as his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background remain unclear. Three of his works are included in the library: Exponential Organizations, Exponential Organizations: The 11 Strongest Attributes for Building Unicorn Companies, and How to Create Genius Teams, all classified under management. These works show that he focuses on how organizations can achieve scalable growth in a rapidly changing environment, as well as on specific approaches to team building and talent management. Exponential Organizations discusses organizational forms built around exponential growth, while the related edition further focuses on the key attributes start-ups need to achieve rapid growth. How to Create Genius Teams turns its attention to team building and collaboration. His writing tends toward practical frameworks and is aimed at business managers and entrepreneurs, giving it a certain level of attention in management reading circles.

尤里·范吉斯特 Author

Yuri van Geest is an author about whom limited public information is available; the library currently holds only one of his works, Exponential Organizations. Classified under management, the book centers on the theme of the exponential organization and discusses how companies can achieve growth in a rapidly changing environment through new organizational logic. Judging from the subject matter, the author focuses on changes in organizational forms and management approaches, and his writing emphasizes conceptual explanation and framework building, aimed at management practitioners and business readers. Owing to the limited materials available, his nationality, dates of birth and death, educational background and other experiences cannot be confirmed, nor is it possible to determine the place of this book within his overall body of work. Based on the information available, this work is the main entry point for understanding his management thinking, and readers may use it as a reference for exploring the idea of the exponential organization.

苏健 Author

Su Jian is an author about whom limited public information is available, and no verified record of his identity or career appears in the current database. Judging from the nine works listed, he has long focused on business management, personal growth, and financial trends. His representative titles include Exponential Organizations, Exponential Organizations: The 11 Strongest Attributes for Building a Unicorn Company, Innovation Leap, The Long View: How to Plan the Three Major Stages of Your Career, Small Losses, Big Wins, The Engine of Change, The Store That Never Disappears: Retail Rules in the Post-E-commerce Era, and The Original People in the Supermarket. These works center on organizational growth, innovation and change, career planning, and retail consumption, and are notable for conceptual distillation and case-based interpretation, combining management practice with the readability of popular business writing. His books address managers, entrepreneurs, and general readers and have exerted a degree of influence in related reading circles.