The term “gazelle” was coined by the economist David Birch. His identification of gazelle companies followed from his 1979 report titled “The Job Generation Process” (MIT Program on Neighborhood and Regional Change), wherein he identified small companies as the biggest creators of new jobs in the economy. In 1994, however, Birch revised his thesis, isolating job-creating companies he called “gazelles.” Characterized less by size than by rapid expansion, Birch defined the species as enterprises whose sales doubled every four years. By his estimates, these firms, roughly 4% of all U.S. companies, were responsible for 70% of all new jobs. The gazelles beat out the elephants (like Walmart) and the mice (corner barbershops). When you hear politicians say, “Small businesses create most of the new jobs,” they’re really talking about young and growing firms. They are talking about gazelles.

As Salim Ismail explains in his eponymous book, an exponential organization (ExO) “is one whose impact (or output) is disproportionately large — at least 10 times larger — than its peers because of the use of new organizational techniques that leverage accelerating technologies.”

These are its core values, accompanied by my brief annotations:

1. Information Accelerates Everything: But be certain that the information is correct, relevant, and sufficient.

2. Drive to Democratization: True, at least in terms of opportunity and access but establish a meritocratic rewards system.

3. Disruption Is the New Norm: Again true, but meanwhile, remember that revenue pays the bills

4. Beware the “Expert”: Wisdom is eternal but expertise in some competencies can become obsolete.

6. Smaller Beats Bigger: Unless the subject is profits. I do agree that not all growth is progress.

7. Rent, Don’t Own: This creates options and alternatives while minimizing fixed, depreciating costs.

8. Trust Beats Control and Open Beats Closed: Trust lubricates mutually beneficial collaboration.

9. Everything Is Measurable and Anything Is Knowable: That is true more often than not but not absolute.

“How exponential is your own organization?”

Salim Ismail is a sought-after speaker, strategist and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He travels extensively addressing various topics including breakthrough technologies and their impact on a variety of industries and society in general.

Salim has spent the last six years building Singularity University as its founding Executive Director and current Global Ambassador. SU is based at NASA Ames and is training a new generation of leaders to manage exponentially growing technologies. Prior to that, as a Vice President at Yahoo, he built and ran Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator.

His latest book, Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it), written with Michael Malone and Yuri van Geest, and published by Diversion Books (2014)