Complexity reigns in today’s strategic environment. We see it in our domestic and foreign policy discussions. A hyper‐enabled information environment that reshapes facts to new truths fogs clarity for business executives and government leaders. Add to this the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning – technologies that are as promising as they are terrifying. Today, the United States is locked in a global competition with a rising China and, to a lesser extent, with a resurgent Russia. The battle is not just about military or economic dominance. The contest is also about the influence and domination of emerging technologies, and the one who gets there first will likely write the rules and enforce the norms. The stakes could not be higher.
The Exponential Era – Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Curve in an Era of Chaotic Change and Disruptive Forces by Michael Wright and David Espindola is a groundbreaking contribution to sense‐making and strategy development. With a revisit to various planning tools and approaches employed over the last several decades, this volume offers a fresh new approach to understanding and assessing complexity and getting ahead of the curve.
Importantly, this book offers a new methodology known as “SPX” – short for Strategic Planning for the Exponential Era. SPX is a norm‐busting approach focused on driving innovation and mapping risk, opportunities, and capabilities to create plans designed to stay ahead of exponential change. SPX is a comprehensive method of looking at exponential change caused by technology, operating environments, and conflicting interests.
The authors are highly experienced and well‐qualified in this field. Michael Wright is a global senior high technology executive and strategist at scale. David Espindola is an accomplished technology executive and consultant. Together they are the founders of Intercepting Horizons, a strategic advisory service that focuses on teaching leaders and organizations to apply SPX to stay ahead of the change and complexity curve. Both serve on the Advisory Board for the University of Minnesota Technological Leadership Institute. I work with Michael on the Board of a small private company in Saint Paul, and through him, I have come to know David. Having spent a career dealing with complexity and chaos, I can attest that these two are onto something new, relevant, and exciting with SPX.
For those who may be concerned about reading a book on strategy written by technologists – rest easy. The Exponential Era is a logical and easy read, well‐organized, and crisp in its overall presentation. I spent my military career around complexity and strategy development – I not only enjoyed reading this book, but I found it incredibly insightful and fresh in its overall approach. You will find it similarly satisfying.
Joseph L. Votel
General, US Army (Retired)
Introduction
In the fall of 2018, we had the opportunity to engage in a discussion with a board member of a Fortune 500 logistics company. Having recently founded Intercepting Horizons, LLC we shared our thoughts on how we had entered a new era in which strategic trends and converging technology vectors were impacting organizations at unprecedented speeds. We called it the Exponential Era.
We discussed how existing planning cycles were no longer effective in this new environment, and how our services would focus on helping companies identify inflection points and develop an innovative strategic planning process that is responsive to fast‐changing conditions. We would help companies pinpoint not only what strategic trends and converging technologies would impact their business, but equally important, when.
We felt confident in our ability to provide such services because we had learned over decades of successfully chasing Moore's law that it is possible to develop a time‐enriched strategic planning process to intercept business inflection points and stay up with and sometimes ahead of exponential change.
This was enough to get the board member intrigued. He confided in us that his CEO had been contemplating these exact questions – when would these business inflection points impact their industry and business?
This informal conversation led to an introduction, and subsequently we started researching the company, its industry, the competitive forces, and the converging technologies that could represent a threat or an opportunity to this very large enterprise that for more than 100 years had been tremendously successful.
What we discovered in researching new entrants to their industry and identifying technology vectors relevant to their business had us concerned.
The Threat of Being Amazoned and Uberized
Keep in mind that this company was the undisputed leader in its industry. They continued to experience year‐over‐year net revenue growth and healthy margins, rewarding investors with solid dividends, and repurchasing a significant amount of stock shares. The repurchase of shares might have been a sign of uncertainty about the company's prospects and an attempt to boost the share price in the short term. However, the leadership team displayed nothing but total confidence in the company's ability to stay competitive and grow.
What had us concerned, despite the company's position as a category king in its market, was the potential for disruption. For many years this company had operated under the following conditions:
1 Thousands of employees
2 Legacy culture, infrastructure, and profit pools
3 Relatively slow to move
The enormous size of this market and the potential for profits were very attractive to potential disruptive entrants with the following contrasting characteristics:
1 Access to cheap technology
2 A low‐cost infrastructure that could be rented
3 Fast‐moving
Indeed, what we found is that there were several exceptionally well‐funded, fast‐moving technology companies that were entering their markets.
It would be very disconcerting for any company to have its market leadership challenged by the likes of Amazon, Google, Uber, or other highly capitalized fast‐moving companies. No one wants to be in that position.
The number of companies that have been “amazoned” is legendary.1 An entire industry has been “uberized” due to Uber's unrelenting long‐term investments in technology. Now, imagine being in the unenviable position of potentially being susceptible to competition from both Amazon and Uber at the same time – that is the threat level that this company was dealing with.
Our research had also revealed that the convergence of several emerging technologies could completely alter the market landscape that this company operated in. We leveraged Artificial Intelligence algorithms to mine patent databases and discovered, for example, that several large companies like Walmart and Amazon were investing in the ability to manufacture products on demand and on the move. The confluence of 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) and GPS capabilities, and the convergence of 3D printing with autonomous vehicles, is just one of many possible technology‐driven disruptions on the horizon that could completely change their industry.
This additional background information helped us understand what might be driving the CEO's quest for knowing “when.” Despite all their successes, this was a company in the eye of a storm, faced with disruptive forces and competitive pressures unlike any they had experienced before. It was vital for this company to get ahead of the inflection point. They needed to be nimbler and more aggressive than their competitors in targeting converging technology investments. They needed to overcome their history and get their entire culture ready for the disruption and transformation of their entire business.
The CEO was absolutely correct in