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Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically

2025-07-19   blogpage essay mentalmodel veryimportant

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This is also true for individuals. Humans change slowly.


You can see how old people are incredibly out of sync with the current world, while young is adapted. The young are more relevant to the world because they were born at a point on the exponential curve where the difference hasn't yet grown too large.1


This explains why startups kill old companies.


Apply this to scientists and see why science advances one funeral at a time.


What is the solution?

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Reset and start from scratch. Revolutionary change.


Don't be afraid to throwing all out and start anew. Both as a person and as an organization. If you don't do that, failure is guaranteed given enough time.


mark-zuckerberg

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

― Mark Zuckerberg




Important: Don't aim the current state of the curve when starting from scratch. Estimate ahead of the curve and start from there. You want to draw the big blue dot on above graph to a higher place.


One heuristic to follow as a person is talk to youngsters consistently. How do they think about the world? What tools do they use? What do they do? They are naturally much more in sync with the world than you.


Another heuristic is to strive to imagine ahead of the curve. Humans estimate linearly, we are very bad at predicting result of exponential increases. Be cognizant of that and don't trust your first instinct in exponential domains.


Sub-optimal solution

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Not making revolutionary changes, but being agile and innovative. This is better than being linear, but still will stay way below the exponential curve.





  1. A caveat: Old people have a certain type of experience and wisdom that can only be gained through time. It's wise to listen to them on such things that don't change or change less over time. In non-exponential domains, trust old people.
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Incoming Internal References (1)

  1. How to Be an Expert in a Changing World (archived)

    If the world were static, we could have monotonically increasing confidence in our beliefs. The more (and more varied) experience a belief survived, the less likely it would be false. Most people implicitly believe something like this about their opinions. And they're justified in doing so with opinions about things that don't change much, like human nature. But you can't trust your opinions in the same way about things that change, which could include practically everything else.
    - Baris: relates to [[Technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically]] and [[Technology changes exponentially but opinions changes logarithmically]]
Outgoing Internal References (2)

  1. Apply this to scientists and see why [[Science advances one funeral at a time (Planck’s principle)|science advances one funeral at a time]].

  2. Another heuristic is to strive to imagine ahead of the curve. Humans [[linear vs exponential thinking|estimate linearly]], we are very bad at predicting result of exponential increases. Be cognizant of that and don't trust your first instinct in exponential domains.
Outgoing Web References (1)
  1. chiefmartec.com/2016/11/martecs-law-great-management-challenge-21st-century
    • ref

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