Peter Diamandis is one smart, forward thinking and amazing guy. He is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial space. In 2014 he was named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” – by Fortune Magazine. He is best known as the founder of the X Prize.
I had the honor of meeting him and hearing him speak last week at “Governing in a time of Seismic Change,” the 2016 Corporate Director Symposium jointly convened by the USC Marshall School and the National Association of Corporate Directors. The topic of his keynote was “Abundance & Disruption during an Exponential Era.” This could not be more appropriate with the quantum change we see happening all around us. Diamandis is the New York Times Bestselling author of Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD – How to go Big, Create Wealth & Impact the World.
“A culture of innovation comes from people who are never satisfied. What’s next?.” “Does your organization celebrate failure to go 10x bigger?” “Exponential growth opportunities are driving massive risk taking.” His talk focused on making big bets, taking huge risks, pointing to the stars and don’t look back. He talked the barriers that companies have to success. So many are risk adverse and their people are not celebrated when they fail, their often fired. To get that ‘moonshot” you must try over and over, harder and harder, until you figure it out. Too many take the path of least resistance. These companies will fail. “The only constant is change, and the rate of change is increasing. 40% of today’s Fortune 500 companies are predicted to disappear in the next 10 years. Competition is no longer the multinational overseas; instead, it’s the exponential entrepreneur creating companies like Uber, Airbnb, DropBox, Oculus, Whatsapp, SpaceX and Tesla. Disruption is also coming from data-driven tech giants who are entering into adjacent fields: Google into the automotive industry, Apple into the music industry, Facebook into the global telecom industry, and IBM Watson into healthcare.” “Today a company’s success depends on mindset, its use of exponential technologies and the power of crowdsourcing. Where should a company be looking to grow 10x bigger, rather than 10-percent bigger? What does it take for a company to become an Exponential Organization? How do you become Uber rather than Kodak?
Hearing Peter challenge this group was energizing. There is so much opportunity if we will let it happen. Are we on an exponential trajectory or are we blinded in the success measures of the past?