Risk & Business Magazine Cooke Insurance Group Spring 2016 | Page 17

predictions, however, are not the predictions. The genius of the
predictions are the law that governs them.
His law of exponential growth in information technology
is remarkably similar to Moore’s Law, which states that “the
number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately
double every 24 months”. The law, named for Gordon Moore,
cofounder of Intel, was first stated in 1965. It remains true to
this day. The law has seen computers go from the size of a room
in a house down to the size of a phone that can fit into your
pocket, while processing power has increased right along with
the change in size.
In the context of business, you can extrapolate that once a
business is able to leverage information technology in its
processes and begins to acquire information, the growth
pattern of that business will begin to double. Once that process
starts it doesn’t stop. That is the seed from which ExO’s are
born. According to Peter Diamondis, author of “Abundance”,
once we are able to harness that power, we will have abundance
in everthing.

Linear vs. Exponential Growth
It is important to understand the difference between linear
and exponential growth as well. Linear growth, as you
would expect, follows a straight line. It is a constant growth
that continually increases at the same rate. 1 + 1 = 2 + 1
= 3 + 1 = 4… and so on. Exponential growth, on the other
hand, grows at a proportion that is relative to the current
value. 1 x 2 = 2 x 2 = 4 x 2 = 8 x 2 = 16 x 2 = 32…and so on.
The curves, as you can see below, look very different. One
interesting thing to note about ExO’s, in particular, is that
when exponential growth is occurring in a field, the experts
in that field almost universally predict linear growth.