Inspiración

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, both in the manual processes of the time and later, in the 20th century, in industrial ones. This is a very useful linear model for forecasting both production times and the resources needed to carry out an activity. An increase in resources translates into 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 amount 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 that allowed this equation to be adapted to the new situation. Consequently, any future forecasts developed on thisbasis envisaged with acceptable accuracy the evolution of technology towards a new scenario. This is why, even in a period of intense process automation, a linear framework for predicting the future was still 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 view on computing evolution. According to Moore, the transistor integration capacity of a microprocessor would double every two years. This approach became the gold standard for the electronics industry to the extent that, even today, sixty years after its formulation, Moore’s law is still valid.

The exponential evolution proposed by Moore was a dramatic paradigm shift with universal implications far beyond the scope of the silicon world’s influence. To begin with, this approach invalidated any application of the continuist and linear reasoning prevailing until then. From that moment on, the future could no longer be treated as a linear extension of the past. Until then, there was no evidence of when a given technology would evolve exponentially, but from Moore onwards, the possibility of disruption should always be kept on the table. All models of forecasting and future planning collapsed. For all these reasons, over the last decades, some planning activities and methodologies that had an indisputable value under the linear management paradigm have shown their shortcomings in a new context in which more and more sectors, directly or indirectly, are evolving exponentially.