If you plan to build a business model that has the the minimum variables for exponential growth and scalability, you should know the ins and outs of how the top 100 of them actually work...don't you think?
I don't mean as a user, I mean, how they actually structure the business.
I would recommend picking up a copy of Exponential Organizations by Salim Asmail.
Salim Ismail is the author of the book "Exponential Organizations" and advises Fortune 500 companies on making the shift from their legacy models to the exponential models before they get [buzzword alert] disrupted...
I feel this pain. There's just no words to describe the threat of getting wiped out by a completely foreign business model while your entire organizational structure is an anchor that stops you from even beginning to compete.
If this is you, you're actually below 0, a startup is at least starting at 0 and 75% of venture backed startups fail, I love you, but you fail.
Legacy business models are filling a need, they're not iterating MVP's, they've proven that consumers value what they offer. Yet accourding to the logic in this book, they will tank like the Titanic. They'll be replaced by Exponential business models. What they offer will still be in demand, but the way consumers will get them will change.
If this is true, this represents an incredible opportunity for the changing of the guard. Who will it be? Could their be a place for you to possibly step in? Will most of them actually keep their footing and adjust? I don't know, historically speaking, it didn't work out for book stores, video rentals or film and it isn't looking pretty for printing, phones, mail or transportation.
In this project, I will fully explore and implement the plan outlined in his book and others like it and document my journey and any interesting findings I come across. It's too important to ignore the incredible rate of change we're experiencing.
I'm hypothisizing that if you can rock this new business model, not just quote some fun sounding tech, or test a thing or two, but actually execute a 360 degree battle strategy like Genghis Khan, then you can bang out 8 figure revenues without the expense of the huge multinational corporations with a board to answer to and stuffy layers of beurocrocy...as long as you're filling an actual need, not guessing.
Is Salim just capitalizing on a last ditch effort of these companies to throw money at the problem on the way down?
Or is he saving their hides?
Both viewpoints will be true for different folks I'm sure.
A CNBC article entitled "A decade to mass extinction event in S&P 500" predicted that 40% of today's Fortune 500 companies will go extinct in the next 10 years.
So whether you're working at one of these legacy models and see this coming and want to hero it up, or you want to disrupt it yourself, then you should study the top 100 Exponential Organizational structures. But don't ignore traditional business sense. The expertise of understanding your potential consumers doesn't come naturally, it's hard won. These legacy businesses have that part down and they are perfectly suited for the job of weilding these new tools and crushing it. The problem is that most of them won't, historically speaking. It's like opening the cage door for a wild animal after it's been caged for it's entire adult life, it just lays down inside the cage, lacking the fight he had in his youth.
Get familiar with both of these models because the scenery is going to change fast and you can use some of that expertise.
It'll fee like a slow death or a fast rise depending on whether you're embracing or rejecting what Salim calls the 10 Attributes of Exponential Organizations as depicted below with the acronyms SCALE and IDEAS.
According to Wikipedia Salim Ismail is a speaker for Singularity University that he co-founded with Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil (Director of Engineering for Google). He is a tech investor and advises Fortune 500 companies on how to make the shift from their traditional business models to the new business model that he calls Exponential Organizations.