If you take 30 steps linearly, you will walk 30 meters. But if you take 30 doubling steps, going 1 meter in the first step, then 2 meters, then 4, then 8, and so on, by step 30, you will have traveled 1 billion meters, or 26 times around the globe.
That is how Salim Ismail, the founding executive director of Singularity University, described exponential thinking, which his institution is hoping to translate from product development to global development.
“When you challenge somebody to impact a billion people, it changes their frame of reference,” he told Devex at the first Singularity University Global Summit in San Francisco last week. “If I say go impact 100 people, you’ll use your traditional thinking to operate that way. When we say go impact a billion people, you’re forced to think exponentially.”