Throughout human history, productivity has always been associated with the number of people available for a specific activity. Whether we are talking about manufacturing, administrative processes or project execution, the production capacity of a team has always been related to the number of hands available to do the job.

This principle has been successfully applied throughout the ages, whether it was for manual processes in its time or later, during the 20th century, for industrial processes. It is a very useful linear model to forecast both production times and the resources required to carry out a given activity. An increase in resource results within a proportional reduction in execution times.

The validity of this model has endured beyond the industrial revolution, resisting the progressive automation of processes which has modified the relationship between the labour required and the volume of product obtained. This surprising longevity has been possible because all the changes in the production systems of the last century were carried out at a pace which allowed this equation to be adapted to the new scenario. Consequently, any future forecast drawn up on this basis contemplated with acceptable precision the evolution of technology towards a new reality. This is why, even in a period of intense process automation, a linear mental framework for forecasting the future continued to be the norm.

The linear model was functional until a very specific date: on 19 April 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, expressed his particular insight into the evolution of computing. According to Moore, the transistor integration capacity of a microprocessor would double every two years. This insight became the golden rule of the electronics industry to the extent that, even today, sixty years after its formulation, Moore’s law is still valid.

Moore’s exponential evolution was a dramatic paradigm shift with universal implications far beyond the scope of influence of the silicon world. To begin with, this insight invalidated any application of the continuum and linear reasoning which had prevailed to date. From this point on, the future could no longer be treated as a linear extension of the past. Until then, there was no evidence of the point at which a given technology would evolve exponentially, but from Moore onwards, the possibility of disruption should always be on the table. All models of forecasting and planning for the future collapsed. As a result, over the last decades, some planning activities and methodologies which were of undisputed value under the linear management paradigm have shown their shortcomings in a new environment in which more and more sectors, directly or indirectly, are evolving exponentially.