6 D’s to Exponential Growth

Peter Diamandis knows about exponential growth and business success. He is a pioneer in the fields of innovation, commercial spaceflights, and incentive competitions. He is also the founder of the XPRIZE Foundation and Abundance 360!

So, when Diamandis speaks about business, innovation, or exponential growth, everyone should take note!

Recently, Diamandis published a brief newsletter outlining the “6-D’s” to exponential growth. These 6-Ds are the six main phases that an idea, product, or technology pass through on their way to making a massive culture impact.

For example, the following 6D technologies have had a huge impact on society:

• Digital cameras
• Computer chip processing speed
• Internet
• Prolific and free, high-speed Wi-Fi
• Streaming video

As a result of the relentless advance of technology, these 6D technologies will continue to have a huge impact on our society and on business. More importantly, new technologies will emerge that will disrupt everything from healthcare to low cost energy, transportation to banking, and food production to internet security.

So what are the 6Ds of exponential growth and how do business leaders leverage them?

6Ds to Exponential Growth

1. Digitization – Once something becomes digitized, it can be replicated and sold for close to zero cost.
2. Deceptive Growth – Doubling in growth seems small at first while the technology is in its infancy.
3. Disruptive Growth – Doubling in growth of a small technology results in massive, disruptive growth. As a result of 30 rounds of doubling, a technology will see about 1 billion-fold growth! This is disruptive (think about the massive growth rate of mega pixels in cameras or processor speed in computers.)
4. Dematerialization – This is the process by which technologies and services move from costing money to becoming available for free. For example, think of all the apps on your phone that you used to have to pay a lot of money for; GPS, high resolution camera, high resolution video, video and voice teleconferencing, weather apps, news, books on line, podcasts, etc. A study was done recently that showed that a typical smartphone today comes with free technology that would have cost more than $1 million in the 1980s!
5. Demonitization – Once a technology has become digitized, the cost for that technology drops significantly. A great example is digital photography which was expensive and marginal quality 20 years ago. This is now “free” and super high resolution on your smartphone. Another example would be cloud based server access and storage capacity….both were significant costs for startups – now it is hardly even a thought!
6. Democratization – As a result of digitizing and demonitizing, the products powered by this technology becomes available for everyone on the planet. There are 3 billion people connected via the internet today and this will grow to 8 billion people by 2025. Free Wi-Fi is everywhere…..we used to have to pay a $1/min.

Take Action

First of all, review your business this week and look for any technology that:

• May be “hiding” in plain sight in your business that fit the 6D model but you are not currently leveraging
• Your business may already be leveraging and is in the early stages of the 6D model
• Your business is not leveraging but should be and fits the 6D model

Secondly, take these insights and develop a plan to either:

1. Get on board with the technology and leverage it through each step of the process
2. Develop the technology through each of the 6D steps
3. Invest in the technology
4. Build a business around the technology

Any business today must be leveraging technologies in the 6D process even if they are not developing the technologies themselves. Failure to recognize and leverage technology will result in business failure!

In conclusion, review these related articles for more development opportunities:

• How to Leverage the Starbucks Strategy
• How to Prepare Yourself for Exponential Growth
• How To Build a Powerful Strategy

 

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” Mahatma Gandhi

 

What experience do you have with 6D exponential growth that may provide value to other readers? Leave your comments below!

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