Exponential Change: A Handy Mnemonic

We all know change is accelerating, but, as Peter Diamandis points out, things can be deceptively slow before the exponentials kick in. In this video, in less than three minutes Diamandis shares what he calls the “Six D’s Of Exponentials” – things to look out for as the world changes. Nowadays this change usually starts as Digitization, his first D, and it starts out Deceptively slowly, his second D. I’ll let him share the rest of the D’s.

The most significant of the D’s, from the standpoint of product managers, is the fifth one – Demonetization. These transformations continually make goods and services cheaper, particularly if they can be delivered or implemented digitally. This suggests, at a minimum, that our markets have shorter and shorter lifespans.

Agile Everywhere

On the topic of change, I ran across this second video from Bruce Feiler yesterday, from a TEDx conference last year. It describes how the speaker took the concepts of agile development and applied them to managing his family – chores, bickering, choosing vacation spots – to great success. This is a different kind of change, a change of thinking, that’s the type of thing we’re going to need more of in our future. Many of our beliefs and common knowledge about the world turns out to be outmoded and old-fashioned, ready to be replaced by new ways of thinking. Whether it comes to family dynamics, or teaching, or government, or the economy itself, old ideas are rapidly running out of steam, and failing to produce as much value – both societal and economic – as we need.

Have you run across new ideas or examples of accelerating change in unusual places?

About the author

Your host and author, Nils Davis, is a long-time product manager, consultant, trainer, and coach. He is the author of The Secret Product Manager Handbook, many blog posts, a series of video trainings on product management, and the occasional grilled pizza.

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  • I would suggest that while accelerating change may be associated with exponential change, the dismantling of history will be done by accelerating exponential change. For example, the undertaking of defining DNA in 1982 or so, was only 2% complete by 1998. As computers speed and power accelerated exponentially, the other 98% was completed in 2 years.

    Moore's law has been actually quadrupling the speed of computers every 2 years for over 4 decades as continuing circuit proximity is reduced along with the increase in transistors. This event will occur 3 more times; then nano-distances can be reduced no further………………until another paradigm takes the place of silicon, like graphene or quantum computing This will accelerate returns in almost all things and disciplines; and, coalesce with the more than 25 disruptive technologies approaching exponentiallity………..Ronald Holmes

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