How exponential technology is outpacing human intuition and corporate strategy

Executive overview

Human intuition is linear, but technology compounds exponentially. Companies that don't internalise this distinction are already being disrupted — S&P 500 tenure has collapsed from 40–60 years in the 1950s to 8–12 years today.

Singularity Group was built to close that gap. It pulls leaders out of quarterly thinking, exposes them to the pace of exponential change, and sends them back to make different decisions — about technology bets, hiring, and long-term vision.

The core insight: the tools will arrive faster than you expect — the only question is whether you've built the imagination to use them.

Why most institutions can't keep up

• Universities and corporations default to linear thinking; exponential change breaks those models
• Moore's Law has held for nearly a century: chips double in power every 18 months while cost halves
• A product improving 2x in capability at 0.5x cost, repeatedly, becomes a superpower — most leaders haven't internalised this
• Company lifespan on the S&P 500 has dropped from 40–60 years to 8–12 years
• Most executives only plan one quarter to one year ahead — far too short a horizon for anticipating disruption

The Singularity model: creating exponential thinkers

• Founded in 2008 at NASA Ames by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis after Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near identified the institutional gap
• Core program: pull leaders out for a week, give them deep exposure to exponential technologies, return them to make bolder decisions
• Target outcome: leaders who can spot disruption early, anticipate it, and branch into adjacent opportunities
• Hiring philosophy shift: optimise for optimistic people with a high vision of the organisation's future problem-solving ability
• Over 60 companies founded through Singularity's programs on exponential-technology principles

Early-mover risk and the "too early" window

• Being 20 years early may not produce a viable business; being 3–8 years early usually does
• Price-performance curves will make a solution viable — the technology moves toward you
• Founders should focus on the impact of the solution, not near-term profitability
• "Every genius was considered an idiot the day before his idea was proven"

Portfolio companies changing industries

• Matternet (drones): helped write the legal framework that enabled commercial drone use in the US — seeding what is now a multi-billion-dollar industry
• Made in Space: put the first 3D printers on the International Space Station; conducted thousands of materials-science experiments for off-planet manufacturing
• Myanmar teacher: used Singularity training to build her country's first online education platform — now serving 500,000 students

Digital biology and the next frontier

• Biology is being digitised; genome sequencing is the first step toward personalised medicine
• Near-future vision: genome sequenced at birth, lifelong personalised health direction
• Healthcare shifts from disease-focused to wellness-focused
• Free or near-free energy (via technology) could reduce food production costs and free human time for intellectual and philanthropic pursuits

The entrepreneurial mindset Singularity promotes

• Don't try to build a company — solve a specific problem you're personally passionate about
• Stripe was built by two Irish teenagers who couldn't charge for a video game; it became one of the world's largest payment platforms
• Curious people solving personal problems is a universal driver of entrepreneurship across cultures
• You no longer need to be the technical expert — in a hyper-connected world, you find the expert
• US culture contributes an optimism that individuals have both the right and the responsibility to build their own future