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The Asteroid of Exponential Change: Why Bold Thinking Matters Now
In 2012, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler's "Abundance" became a global phenomenon, translated into twenty languages and sparking conversations about humanity's potential for solving its greatest challenges. Their follow-up, "Bold," arrived at a critical moment when technological acceleration was beginning to reshape every industry. The book quickly became required reading in Silicon Valley, with Elon Musk calling it "a visionary roadmap for people who believe they can change the world." What makes "Bold" particularly fascinating is its unique blend of technological forecasting, psychological insights, and practical entrepreneurial strategies. As Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder, noted: "This book makes clear how we can all participate in building a better future." With endorsements from Larry Page, Richard Branson, and even former President Bill Clinton, "Bold" has become the unofficial playbook for anyone seeking to harness exponential technologies to create massive impact.
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When Dinosaurs Fall: The Rise of Exponential Entrepreneurs
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth with catastrophic consequences, wiping out the dinosaurs who couldn't adapt to the sudden environmental changes. This extinction event created unprecedented opportunities for our small, nimble mammalian ancestors who could adapt quickly. Today, we're experiencing a similar phenomenon-not from a physical asteroid, but from exponential technologies that are striking our world with comparable force.
These technologies-doubling in power while halving in cost every 12-24 months-are transforming industries overnight. The story of Kodak perfectly illustrates this transformation. In 1975, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson invented the world's first digital camera. When he demonstrated this filmless device to Kodak executives, they asked, "Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?" By 1996, Kodak had 140,000 employees, a $28 billion market cap, and controlled 90% of the US film market. Yet they failed to recognize they weren't in the film business-they were in the memory-preservation business.
When Sasson estimated it would take 15-20 years for digital cameras to threaten Kodak's business, he based this on Moore's law-the observation that computing power doubles roughly every 12-24 months. Unlike linear progression (1,2,3,4...), exponential growth compounds through doubling (1,2,4,8...), creating deceptively powerful acceleration. As Diamandis explains: "If I take 30 large linear steps from my Santa Monica living room, I end up across the street. If I take 30 exponential steps, I end up orbiting Earth 26 times."
This exponential growth follows what Diamandis calls the "Six Ds": digitalization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization. First, when something becomes represented by ones and zeros, it follows exponential growth curves. Next comes deception-the doubling of small numbers appears insignificant until suddenly breaking into explosive growth. This leads to disruption, as seen when digital photography destroyed Kodak's business model. Demonetization removes money from the equation-today's smartphones contain what was once nearly $900,000 worth of 1980s technologies, now essentially free. Dematerialization means physical products themselves vanish, as smartphones eliminated the need for separate cameras, GPS devices, and music players. Finally, democratization occurs when these technologies become accessible to everyone.
For established companies, this process represents an existential threat. The average S&P 500 company lifespan has shrunk from sixty-seven years in the 1920s to just fifteen years today. But for entrepreneurs, it creates unprecedented opportunities to solve global challenges at scale with minimal resources-making this the perfect moment for bold thinking.
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The Power of Exponential Technologies
Great business leaders throughout history share one critical trait: vision-the ability to see ahead and confidently move toward that future despite obstacles. Understanding exponential technologies provides entrepreneurs with this same visionary advantage, allowing them to anticipate disruption and position themselves to capitalize on it.
The key moment for entrepreneurs is identifying when technologies exit what Gartner calls the "trough of disillusionment" and begin climbing the "slope of enlightenment." This transition is often signaled by the development of a simple, elegant user interface. When Marc Andreessen created Mosaic in 1993-the first web browser with a user-friendly interface-he unlocked the Internet's potential, growing it from 26 websites in early 1993 to millions by 1998.
Today, multiple exponential technologies are developing these interfaces, creating Internet-sized opportunities. 3-D printing, after thirty years of deceptive growth, is now disrupting manufacturing across industries. Consumer products from smartphone cases to jewelry have moved from hobby to mainstream industry. In transportation, Local Motors demonstrated printing an entire car in one day. Aerospace companies like SpaceX now print rocket engines, while 3D Systems manufactures virtually all hearing aids worldwide.
Networks and sensors are similarly exploding in capability. By 2020, over 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, with sensors monitoring everything from jet engines to agricultural fields. Cisco estimates this Internet-of-Things will generate $19 trillion in value between 2013-2020-more than America's annual GDP.
Computing power has become essentially infinite and free. As Rackspace's Graham Weston explains, "Today the computation speed that someone in the middle of Mumbai has access to outstrips what the entire US government had during the sixties and seventies." This abundance enables "brute force" approaches to innovation-using raw computational power to try every possible solution rather than seeking elegant mathematical algorithms.
Artificial intelligence has evolved dramatically from science fiction to everyday reality. IBM's Watson, famous for beating humans on Jeopardy in 2011, is now cloud-based and available to entrepreneurs through an API. Companies like Modernizing Medicine are using Watson to transform healthcare by combining structured patient outcome data with vast medical knowledge.
Robotics is emerging from decades of deception into disruption. Baxter, created by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks, represents a breakthrough in human-safe, intuitive robotics. Unlike dangerous industrial robots that require cages, Baxter is designed to work alongside humans and can be programmed simply by guiding its arms through desired motions. The economic implications are profound-robots like Baxter can work for the equivalent of $4 per hour without breaks or complaints.
Perhaps most revolutionary is synthetic biology-the ability to program DNA like software. As synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel explains, "Used to be all this stuff was done by hand in the lab, with enormous expense and high error rates. Today we manipulate DNA with computers, using programs that function much like word processors." While still five to ten years from mainstream disruption, synthetic biology will eventually transform everything from medicine to manufacturing.
The greatest opportunities often exist at the intersection of multiple exponential technologies. Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), founded by Diamandis with genetics pioneer Dr. J. Craig Venter and stem-cell expert Dr. Robert Hariri, combines genomics, infinite computing, machine learning, and stem cell therapies to tackle aging itself. Their goal: "making one hundred years old the new sixty."
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The Psychology of Going Bold
To tackle the bold challenges made possible by exponential technologies, entrepreneurs need more than just technical capabilities-they need the right mindset. This begins with understanding the "skunk works" approach to innovation pioneered by Lockheed's Kelly Johnson in the 1940s.
When tasked with rapidly developing America's first military jet, Johnson assembled a small team of brilliant engineers, gave them complete design freedom, and isolated them from bureaucracy. The approach worked spectacularly-they delivered the aircraft in just 143 days, seven days ahead of schedule. This methodology has since been adopted by countless companies, including Apple, where Steve Jobs created his own skunk works to build the first Macintosh, famously declaring: "It is better to be a pirate than join the Navy."
The skunk works approach works because it's built around what psychologists call "high, hard goals." Research by Gary Latham and Edwin Locke discovered that setting challenging goals increased performance and productivity 11 to 25 percent, with big goals significantly outperforming small ones by focusing attention and increasing persistence.
For these high, hard goals to work, three intrinsic motivators are essential: autonomy (the desire to steer our own ship), mastery (the desire to steer it well), and purpose (the need for the journey to mean something). As Daniel Pink explains in Drive, our "deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to fill our life with purpose" is what truly drives high performance.
GoogleX takes this approach further by aiming not for 10% improvements but for 10x (1000%) improvements. As Astro Teller explains, "If you choose to make something 10 percent better, you are almost by definition signing up for the status quo." A 10x goal forces throwing out assumptions and replacing "smartness and resources with bravery and creativity."
This mindset shift enables access to flow-an optimal state of consciousness where we perform and feel our best. Research shows executives are five times more productive in flow states-a staggering 500% increase in productivity. As Richard Branson describes: "In two hours [in flow], I can accomplish tremendous things... It's like there's no challenge I can't meet."
Flow has seventeen triggers across environmental, psychological, social, and creative categories. Environmental triggers include high consequences (when risk is present, our attention naturally focuses), rich environments (combining novelty, unpredictability, and complexity), and deep embodiment (total physical awareness through multiple sensory streams). Psychological triggers include clear goals, immediate feedback, and the challenge/skills ratio-flow appears near the emotional midpoint between boredom and anxiety.
Group flow occurs when multiple people enter the zone together, requiring serious concentration, shared goals, good communication, equal participation, risk, familiarity, blended egos, sense of control, close listening, and the "yes, and..." approach of building on others' ideas rather than shutting them down.
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Launching Above the Line of Super-Credibility
How do you launch and scale bold, seemingly impossible ventures? The key is establishing super-credibility from the start.
People mentally place new ideas above or below a "line of credibility." Below this line, ideas are dismissed; above it, they receive consideration. But there's also a "line of super-credibility"-when ideas are born above this higher threshold, they're immediately accepted as fact, shifting focus from probabilities to implications and involvement.
When Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson launched Planetary Resources to mine asteroids, they spent three years in stealth mode building credibility. They recruited Chris Lewicki, who had run three billion-dollar Mars missions at NASA's JPL, along with top engineers from the Mars Curiosity rover team. They also enlisted billionaire investors including Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot Jr., and Richard Branson. This combination of elite space engineers and respected businessmen made their asteroid mining venture immediately credible despite its audacity.
For entrepreneurs without billionaire connections, super-credibility is still attainable. When Diamandis and fellow "space cadets" Bob Richards and Todd Hawley founded the International Space University as graduate students, they built credibility through a strategic playbook: leveraging past successes, starting with feasible intermediate goals, securing participation from major space agencies by using each commitment to attract others, and having respected advisors present their plans rather than presenting themselves.
Breaking ambitious visions into executable "subgoals" provides dual benefits. First, it aligns risk with reward, as funding typically comes in stages as entrepreneurs prove capability. Second, it provides psychological confidence, as research shows big goals only increase motivation when people believe they can achieve them.
This approach resembles the folktale of "stone soup," where clever soldiers convince villagers to contribute ingredients to a pot of "magical" stone soup. The stones represent bold ideas; villagers' contributions parallel the support from investors and partners. What makes stone soup work is authentic passion-not the rigid "passion of the true believer" but the flexible "passion of the explorer" who remains open to input while maintaining forward momentum.
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Learning from Billionaire Visionaries
Four remarkable entrepreneurs have mastered the art of "thinking at scale" to build world-changing companies: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Page. Through extensive research and personal interactions, Diamandis discovered they rely on eight key mental strategies: risk taking and mitigation, rapid iteration, passion and purpose, long-term thinking, customer-centric thinking, probabilistic thinking, rational optimism, and reliance on first principles.
Elon Musk's journey began with early technology ventures Zip2 and PayPal, which provided the capital for his true passions: space exploration and sustainable energy. When he discovered NASA had no concrete plans for Mars missions, he conceived SpaceX to develop the necessary launch technology. His empire now includes Tesla Motors and SolarCity, collectively worth $30 billion.
Musk's success stems from passion, purpose, and first-principles thinking-breaking problems down to fundamental truths rather than following trends. He thinks probabilistically rather than deterministically, taking on projects where importance outweighs risk. During 2007-2009, all three companies nearly failed simultaneously, forcing him to spend his last dollar saving Tesla-but his persistence paid off when SpaceX won a $1.6 billion NASA contract.
Richard Branson embodies boldness in everything he does. From starting Student magazine as a teenager to launching Virgin Atlantic with a single used 747 against British Airways' objections, Branson has created over 500 different companies across diverse industries. His success stems from two key strategies: his passion for fun and his experimental customer-centrism. He uses fun both as fuel and as a first principle, assuming if something excites him, customers will love it too. While competitors like Pan Am and TWA disappeared, Virgin thrived by prioritizing customer experience.
Jeff Bezos built Amazon on two foundational principles: long-term thinking and radical customer-centrism. This combination has allowed Amazon to extend far beyond books into music, movies, electronics, cloud computing, ebooks, and publishing itself. Bezos embraces experimentation as essential to innovation, accepting that failures are inevitable and proportional to the number of experiments run. His advice to entrepreneurs mirrors Musk's: "Position yourself with something that captures your curiosity, something that you're missionary about."
Larry Page's insatiable curiosity and boundary-pushing mindset drive Google's success. His favorite questions-"Why not?" and "Why not bigger?"-reveal his comfort with limitless thinking. Page's leadership philosophy centers on world-changing impact: "I have a very simple metric-are you working on something that can change the world?" His "healthy disregard for the impossible" leads him to set seemingly unreachable targets that often succeed spectacularly, like Google's autonomous car (now exceeding 500,000 self-driven miles) and simultaneous translation between 64 languages.
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Harnessing the Power of the Crowd
Today's exponential entrepreneurs have unprecedented access to global talent, funding, and communities through three powerful crowd tools: crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and community building.
Crowdsourcing transforms how entrepreneurs access expertise and labor. Matt Barrie's Freelancer.com connects 10 million users across 234 countries, allowing resource-limited entrepreneurs to tap specialized talent worldwide. The diversity is remarkable-from basic tasks to quantum physics and aerospace projects. As Thomas Friedman observed, today's entrepreneur can build a multimillion-dollar company from a room with just a credit card by leveraging global talent.
Specialized platforms address different needs: Tongal connects brands with over 40,000 creative freelancers for video production; TopCoder enables 600,000+ developers, designers, and data scientists to compete in solving technical challenges; and innovative dual-use platforms like Luis von Ahn's reCAPTCHA simultaneously verify humans while digitizing books that computers struggle to read.
Crowdfunding has revolutionized entrepreneurial finance. When Eric Migicovsky couldn't raise $200,000 from VCs for his Pebble smartwatch, he turned to Kickstarter as a last resort. The campaign stunned everyone-reaching $100,000 in just two hours and ultimately raising over $10 million from nearly 69,000 backers. This success led to an additional $15 million in VC funding and sales of over 400,000 watches in their first year.
Beyond financing, crowdfunding provides market validation, customer communities, inexpensive acquisition, and PR benefits. The most successful campaigns share five key characteristics: products in late prototype phase, capable teams, community-focused consumer products, access to large follower bases, and solutions to meaningful problems.
Communities represent the next evolution in harnessing what Clay Shirky calls "cognitive surplus"-the trillions of free hours people spend doing what they care about. Unlike crowds (everyone online), communities are purpose-driven groups that work passionately on projects they believe in. Today's communities differ dramatically from historical ones through geographic liberation (connecting experts globally), exponentially increased project scale, and revolutionary communication structures.
The driving force behind these communities is reputation economics-our online reputations now enable valuable non-financial exchanges based on trust and mutual benefit. This system allows for dynamic, personalized interactions that accelerate innovation beyond what money alone could accomplish, creating what community expert Gina Bianchini calls "a shocking amount of leverage."
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Incentive Competitions: The Ultimate Innovation Tool
Incentive competitions represent the ultimate exponential crowd tool for entrepreneurs tackling bold challenges. The concept is simple yet powerful: set a clear, measurable goal and offer a substantial prize to the first achiever. These competitions embody brutal objectivity-they don't care about credentials, reputation, or past experience-only tangible results matter. This democratization of innovation opens doors for unconventional thinkers and outsiders who might otherwise be ignored by traditional funding channels.
These prizes have driven transformative innovation for centuries, often catalyzing entire industries. The 1714 Longitude Prize, offering 20,000, revolutionized maritime navigation by solving the critical challenge of determining longitude at sea. Napoleon's food preservation prize led to modern canning methods, fundamentally changing food storage and military logistics. The Orteig Prize, which Charles Lindbergh won in 1927, helped launch the aviation industry. In our hyperconnected world with mature social media and crowdsourcing capabilities, these prizes have never been more powerful for driving breakthroughs across multiple sectors simultaneously.
After BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE offered $1.4 million to double the industry's best oil recovery rate. The competition drew 350 teams from 17 countries, with winner Elastec/American Marine achieving a stunning 400% improvement over industry standards. Most remarkably, finalist Vor-Tek, a team of novices who met at a tattoo parlor and tested their design in a Jacuzzi, doubled the industry standard despite having no oil experience whatsoever. This exemplifies how incentive competitions can attract innovative solutions from unexpected sources.
Incentive competitions succeed through multiple mechanisms: they break through market failures and entrenched incumbents by attracting new funding sources, cast wide nets for diverse expertise, increase risk tolerance by removing institutional barriers, drive rapid innovation through competition, enable crowdfunding of research and development, and ultimately create entire industries. They're particularly effective in situations with clear targets but flexible methods, access to large crowds of potential innovators, and when small teams can feasibly solve the challenge. The competitive element often drives participants to invest far more resources than the prize value itself.
When designing your own incentive competition, several key principles ensure success. Focus on creating simple, measurable rules with an unambiguous finish line that leaves no room for interpretation. Define the problem to solve rather than prescribing specific solutions, allowing for creative approaches. Balance audacious goals with achievable targets to maintain motivation. Size the prize purse appropriately to attract serious competitors while ensuring ROI. Design for persistent media exposure to maintain momentum and attract participants. Make participation truly global and open to maximize breakthrough potential. Consider including milestone prizes to maintain engagement during longer competitions.
Modern examples like the Google Lunar XPRIZE, Netflix Algorithm Challenge, and Amazon Picking Challenge demonstrate how incentive competitions continue to drive innovation in emerging technologies. These competitions often create value far beyond their immediate goals by developing new technologies, forming collaborative networks, and identifying talented innovators who might otherwise remain undiscovered.
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Creating a World of Abundance
As we stand at this unique moment in human history, exponential entrepreneurs have unprecedented power to create both extraordinary wealth and positive global impact. The biggest problems facing humanity are also our biggest business opportunities-clean water, renewable energy, education, healthcare, and sustainable food production all represent multi-trillion-dollar markets waiting to be transformed. These challenges aren't just opportunities for profit; they're chances to fundamentally reshape human civilization for the better.
For the first time in history, passionate individuals have access to the technology, minds, and capital needed to solve major global challenges. The democratization of problem-solving power has evolved dramatically - from being exclusively in the hands of royalty centuries ago, to national leaders decades ago, to almost anyone with passion and vision today. Cloud computing, open-source technology, crowdfunding platforms, and global connectivity have leveled the playing field, allowing innovators from anywhere to participate in solving worldwide challenges.
We've already witnessed remarkable progress across multiple fronts. 3D printing technology can now construct ten homes daily, revolutionizing affordable housing solutions. AI-powered healthcare democratization is on the horizon, with diagnostic tools becoming accessible through smartphones. Asteroid mining missions planned within the next decade promise to unlock vast resources beyond Earth. Solar energy costs have plummeted by over 90% in the past decade, while battery technology advances make renewable energy increasingly viable.
However, abundance isn't inevitable through technology alone-it requires perhaps history's largest cooperative effort. This includes collaboration between governments, private sector innovation, academic research, and grassroots movements. Success demands breaking down traditional silos and fostering unprecedented levels of global cooperation.
As Marcus Shingles astutely notes, while exponential technologies will democratize power, they could also concentrate wealth in few hands, demanding ethical leadership for the turbulent times ahead. The rise of billion-user platforms and AI capabilities creates both opportunities and risks. In a world of ubiquitous sensors and transparency, oppression and inequality will become harder to hide, potentially ushering in a new era of moral global leadership. This transparency could force accountability and drive positive social change.
We are built for bold action, but need courageous leadership to avoid wandering "in the desert of bad decisions." This means making difficult choices about technology deployment, resource allocation, and social priorities. Abundance's time has come, requiring visionary entrepreneurs and leaders to step forward. The tools and knowledge exist - we need the wisdom and determination to use them well.
The path to abundance requires balancing innovation with responsibility, profit with purpose, and individual success with collective benefit. Through thoughtful application of exponential technologies and collaborative global effort, we can unlock humanity's full potential and create a world of sustainable abundance for all.
