About this episode

Greg LaBlanc interviews Salim Ismail about the concept of exponential organizations and the challenges legacy firms face in adopting disruptive innovations.

Salim Ismail is a co-founder & partner at Exponential Venture Capital, founder of OpenExO, founding Executive Director at Singularity University, and an author. His latest work is, Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it). Greg and Salim discuss Salim’s shift from focusing on exponential technologies to organizational design as the main bottleneck to organizations adopting disruption. He traces the idea to his experience leading innovation at Yahoo, where disruptive ideas were rejected by a corporate “immune system,” and to building Singularity University with a tiny team, which led him to study fast-scaling unicorns and develop the Exponential Organizations (ExO) model. They also talk about how legacy firms optimize for predictability and efficiency, making them hostile to disruption, and why change must often happen at the edge via spin-outs (e.g., Nespresso, Google X, Apple teams). Salim argues that AI agents will replace much middle management coordination (60–80% in 5–7 years), making judgment and accountability scarce, reshaping universities and expertise, and accelerating permissionless…

People in this episode

Host: Greg LaBlanc

Guest: Salim Ismail

Topics covered

• exponential organizations
• organizational design
• disruption
• innovation
• AI in management

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Exponential Venture Capital, OpenExO, Singularity University, Yahoo, Nespresso, Google X, Apple

Books & works: Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)

More episodes of unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

• 682. Exploring Complexity: From Physics to Economics with J. Doyne Farmer · September 8, 2026 · 50 min
• 681. Dining with Purpose: Exploring Taste and Tradition with Scott Samuelson · September 3, 2026 · 60 min
• 680. Decoding Change Management in the Workplace with Ashley Goodall · September 1, 2026 · 52 min
• 679. Happy Spending and Joyful Climate Action with Elizabeth Dunn · August 27, 2026 · 56 min
• 677. AI-Driven Futures: Business Strategies for the Digital Age with Carlos Escapa · August 17, 2026 · 55 min
• 676. Failing Fast and Learning Hard with Pascal Finette · August 14, 2026 · 54 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc podcast page.