What is exponential change?
We are living in a moment of transition, where problems, as well as technology, are leapfrogging at a never-seen-before pace. Like other transition moments in history, this is a moment to pause, reflect and reimagine how we approach the new era. If we want to counter rapidly growing and mutating problems, speed is our best friend – speed of execution, speed of building solutions, speed of getting solutions to citizens and speed of responding to challenges as they emerge all influence the speed of solving the problem. And to do so, we need to move from a linear change mindset to an exponential change pathway.
As humans, we are inherently biased towards linear change – it is easier to see, to grasp, to enact and it has served us well all these years. A famous French riddle explains exponential well. A lily pond starts with a single lily leaf, each day the number of leaves doubles; two leaves on the second day; four leaves on the third day; eight leaves on the fourth day; on the 29th day it is half full and on the 30th day the pond is full and other flora and fauna are struggling to survive. If someone wants to save the lake, they have to be able to see exponential change early and plan for it.
At the Centre for Exponential Change, we think of exponential change as change that inspires more and rapid changes. It does not happen magically, it needs to be planned. Let me give you the example of Aadhaar, India’s identity project. When Aadhaar was conceptualised in 2009, it was estimated that roughly 400 million people in India did not have an individual identity document, while only 17% of India’s population had bank accounts. What India needed was a safe, secure, reliable way to give a unique identity to its 1.2 billion+ population, some of whom had no documents to prove who they were. As a digital identity system, Aadhaar allows governments, civil society, and businesses to trust that the person they are transacting with is truly who they claim to be. A small change that drastically reduced the cost of identity trust from USD 10-20 per transaction to USD 0.27.8 also triggered many changes.
Aadhaar gave millions of Indians direct access to government subsidies (rations, social pensions, cooking gas, fertilisers, etc) without having to rely on middlemen, the ability to access affordable formal financial services (like bank accounts) for the first time, and a way to prove their existence to access civil liberties and Constitutional rights (such as voting, education, jobs) for the first time. This has unlocked large economic value in India, helped the government save USD 10 billion every year and made India one of the leaders in digital payments – all in less than a decade. A small change that triggered many and rapid changes.
How to find the first domino
Exponential change can often be deceptive in its early stages, appearing similar to linear growth. However, as the rate of change accelerates, it leads to a swift and significant impact.
How can one identify the exponential behaviour of the problem and then design for exponential change in solutions?
How to design for it
What infrastructure can support such a transformation at the very beginning and also at scale? Who should build it, who should support it, and how should it be governed so that it is advantageous for everyone? How can one foster an environment that turbocharges the creation of a large diversity of solutions?
How to sustain it
How can such a change sustain? How can many diverse actors come together to solve problems – not just from civil society, but the State, markets and communities too? How can network effects be induced, such that each new actor could solve problems in their own way and in doing so, increase the value of the network for all other actors?
At C4EC, these are some of the questions we start many of our co-travelling journeys with. Exponential change is an emergent field and many thinkers, network-weavers, innovators and System Orchestrators have come together to undertake exponential change journeys, learn from them and curate knowledge and pathways to solving problems at scale, with speed and sustainably.
Chasms on the journey of exponential change 
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