Businesses, governments, and organizations around the globe are finding it impossible to keep up with today's fast-changing world. Typically, leaders at these institutions approach issues with an old-world mindset.
The drawback is those old ways of thinking slow them down and leave them vulnerable to disruption. Meanwhile, more progressive professionals cleverly use technology to achieve exponential growth.
However, there are always opportunities for legacy organizations to learn, evolve, and adapt.
What is OpenExO?
OpenExO was created to help businesses, individuals, and organizations around the globe adopt and leverage new technologies to achieve success at a faster rate—or as they like to say, grow exponentially.
Their approach is based on the best-selling book Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it), published in 2014 by Salim Ismail (co-founder of OpenExO), Michael S. Malone, and Yuri Van Geest.
The book’s management strategies help existing organizations advance their leadership, culture, and management thinking three years ahead in just ten weeks by coaching them on how to develop their own breakthrough solutions using an approach called the ExO Sprint.
Initially piloted at Proctor & Gamble, the ExO Sprint has been implemented in dozens of leading corporations globally.
"We are living in one of the most amazing times in human history with the emergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and drones," said OpenExO co-founder Francisco Palao.
"Currently, the world is facing some of the greatest challenges of humanity. However, the biggest business opportunities involve tackling the biggest challenges, which allows us to transform the world for the better."
New technologies—and the new business models they enable—allow organizations to rapidly transform the economic landscape. Once the OpenExO community proved this was possible, they began to focus on teaching others how to leverage the ExO methodology.
The ExO Community: Giving Businesses the Blueprint
In corporations, it can be difficult to get the old-guard to be progressive and take technology-related risks; in new businesses, it can be difficult to acquire and retain talent.
But the ExO community and economy are looking to provide solutions to these problems.
The ExO community gives businesses, individuals and organizations access to a global pool of on-demand talent that contains more than 2,300 coaches, investors, consultants, technologists and innovation specialists.
The community gives organizations an easy way to locate and work with the world's top innovation talent. In this ecosystem, you can see profiles, location, skill sets, previous experience, and connections of the ExO advisors who can help your organization grow exponentially.
"The ExO Community gives others the resources to solve their own problems and find new solutions," said Lars Lin Villebæk, the founder of
Educatefor.LifeIn two previous projects, we helped a major financial institution prepare for a world with zero trading commissions—which gave them a huge head start on their rivals."
The OpenExO platform serves as an online meeting place where organizations can connect with top-tier talent to help them solve problems and grow.
That is why Villebæk, who is located in Denmark, can connect and help the team behind the urban design project prosper even though they are located in Bangkok.
However, doing business across borders can be tricky when it comes to payment, especially in terms of transaction fees and payment settlement time. To overcome the issues that come with a decentralized community, the OpenExO team created a blockchain-based crypto token.
What is the ExO Economy?
"The ExO Economy is an emerging marketplace with its own native blockchain and cryptocurrency: the EXOS token, said Kent Langley, the Chief Science Officer at OpenExO. "The EXOS token connects all ExO community members economically and is used on the OpenExO platform as a means of peer-to-peer exchange for transformation services."
"The ExO community includes over 2,300 individuals operating in over 102 countries around the world. Having a digital asset such as EXOS in a shared proof of stake network significantly reduces transaction friction in the community," said Langley.
The EXOS token solves the problem that arose when it came to compensating the innovators located around the globe. Cross-border transactions are known to be expensive and often take several days before they are settled.
The ExO solution was to settle payments over the blockchain through their utility token, the EXOS.
"The EXOS token represents access to transformation services on the OpenExO marketplace. It gives its users access to primary and third-party educational services, and over time, much more" said Langley.
Payments that take place over a blockchain network are peer-to-peer. This means that transactions do not require a financial intermediary to facilitate the transfer of funds from point A to point B.
It also means that the expensive cross-border transaction and service fees that the intermediary charges are removed from the equation. The result is a low-cost payment network that allows individuals within the community to easily pay one another when it comes to acquiring talent and paying for services.
Unlocking Your Growth Potential
We live in a world where businesses and governments face difficult problems of increasing complexity. This is made more challenging when leaders continue to take an old-world approach.
Instead of increasing human capital or physical assets, OpenExO has shown how companies can harness information and technology to accelerate past their competitors using staff-on-demand and leveraged assets; two key attributes of Exponential Organizations.
Many legacy organizations seek guidance when it comes to incorporating the exponential growth model. Finding the talent that can help them achieve that goal within their industry can be difficult. Today's experts tend to be located all over the world, and sourcing them locally can be limiting and inefficient.
The ExO community and economy solve both of those problems. By giving organizations access to a global pool of innovators, futurists, and disruptors, OpenExO provides businesses and governments with the resources they need to prosper in today's rapidly-evolving world.