Azeem Azhar The Exponential Age

2021 Financial Times Best Book of the Year

The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society

A bold exploration and call-to-arms over the widening gap between AI, automation, and big data—and our ability to deal with its effects.

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Top Reviews

  • "The world is in the midst of [an exponential] transformation, argues Azeem Azhar....With his experience as a startup entrepreneur, tech investor, innovation executive at big companies and journalist, Mr. Azhar is well-placed to decrypt these digital trends. He has a knack for interrogating and inverting conventional thinking, for example in making the case that the adoption of exponential technology leads to job increases, not cuts--witness the rising headcounts of expanding businesses such as Amazon or Ocado, a British online grocer. The unemployment that results, he says, is down to the firms that fail to adapt, not those that do."

    - The Economist

  • "As high-tech innovation accelerates in ways that deliver huge benefits to society but also create unique challenges, Azeem delivers a comprehensive but lively take on the key issues informing what he calls the Exponential Age. It's an essential addition to the ongoing discourse about where these remarkable new technologies can take us, and where we should be aiming to go. Highly recommended!"

    – Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and co-author of Blitzscaling

  • "While many talk about the rate of innovation, too few talk about its direction. Azeem's new book helps bring that directionality to the surface through a dynamic understanding of the connections between economic, social and technological forces. Read this book if you are interested in how we can design a more inclusive and sustainable system with a redirection of technological change at its center."

    - Mariana Mazzucato, Professor at University College London, and author of Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

  • "Most businesses and business leaders measure and think in linear terms. Azeem Azhar understands and writes about how the truly important breakthroughs take the form of exponential functions. In The Exponential Age, Azeem builds the case for exponential thinking through insightful examples of technologies that have made possible discontinuous leaps forward."

    - Tom Glocer, Former CEO of Thomson Reuters, and Executive Chairman at BlueVoyant LLC and Capitolis Inc

  • "Azeem Azhar's The Exponential Age presents an audacious spectrum of interconnecting trends, which already profoundly impact our lives. In the book, the risks and challenges arising out of the exponentially leaping technologies are masterfully balanced with opportunities and proposed policy actions. The book is an essential read for leaders and enthusiasts who care about the better future for all."

    - Giedrimas Jeglinskas, Assistant Secretary General at NATO