Without question, one of the most extraordinary exponential thinkers the world has ever known was Leonardo da Vinci. In the early sixteenth century he was already envisioning helicopter-like contraptions, tanks, bicycles, calculators, and even the concentrated use of solar power.
Lesser known than many of his other works of art is a painting called The Bird’s Eye-View of a Landscape. In it da Vinci paints the Tuscan landscape as imagined from the perspective of a bird. The painting is remarkable because the viewpoint is far higher than any building in Florence could have afforded da Vinci at that time.
The painting required da Vinci to envision himself on a perch a few thousand feet high. Interestingly, if da Vinci were six feet in height, through the power of zenzizenzizenzic, he would have reached 1,536 feet–or about the perspective from which the landscape was painted. The challenge for the exponential executive is to do the same with tomorrow’s business landscape. If you do extrapolate out many of the technological advances mentioned in this blog over the next decade, the view is sure to astound you. (If you don’t believe me, I recommend this stimulating 18-minute talk by Juan Enriquez, which reiterates the theme of exponential evolution that I discussed in this recent post describing how the issue might be the next great political debate in this country.)
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