Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles: A guide to spotting, avoiding, and exploiting investment bubbles in tech

(Paperback)

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New technologies are an investment minefield. Putting money behind them means taking a risk on unproven ventures, often from inexperienced (and potentially unscrupulous) developers. While some will lead the investor to fantastic gains, many others turn out to be mere bubbles - a flimsy veneer of excitement and hype with little profitable at the core. But ignoring these technologies can be even worse, as this can mean failing to capitalise on the next great step in innovation. From cryptocurrencies, blockchain, the metaverse, Web3, and NFTs, to self-driving vehicles, delivery drones, solid state batteries, eVTOLs, and more, technology bubbles have been inflating and popping for many years. Each time a bubble pops, tens if not hundreds of billions of investment dollars disappear with them. Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles arms the reader with the tools required to differentiate between bubbles and genuine, sustainable technological revolutionaries. Under the expert tutelage of Jeffrey Funk, you will learn: The economics of modern businesses and how they lead to bubbles forming. How to assess new technologies to sift viable investments from hype-driven bubbles. That you can be a far better judge of new technologies than so-called "industry experts". How to identify exciting new opportunities in a world of money-losing startups.

Reviews

I love tech, but not so blindly as to have overlooked the fact that it attracts an absurdly large proportion of available investment, and where the investor hype is often misplaced, mistimed or both. On the principle of always invert, I dont think you should merely read this excellent book, but also keep it within easy reach on your desk. -- Rory Sutherland * Author of Alchemy and Vice-Chairman at Ogilvy UK *
This book explores how we often exaggerate the impact and value created by high-tech innovations, along with startups and at least some of the academic research and media reports. It is a thought-provoking review of technology fads and fashions, from the sharing economy to artificial intelligence and much more. -- Michael A. Cusumano * SMR Distinguished Professor and former Deputy Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Co-Author of The Business of Platforms *
Jeff Funk is an all-too-rare critical analyst who has seen beyond the fads, hype, and jargon to uncover critical weaknesses in the foundations and performance of our so-called innovation economy. -- Daniel Sarewitz * Emeritus Professor of Science and Society, Arizona State University *
A wonderful book that is both educational and entertaining. Jeffrey Funk does a masterful job explaining how groupthink, greed, and hype lead to bubbles that gum up Americas great engine of growthentrepreneurs with good ideas starting small businesses that sometimes grow into very large businesses. -- Gary Smith * Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College and Author of more than ten books including Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and The Assault on Science *
Funks work is a savage attack on the tech sector, startup hype and the mythology of the new economy. It lays out a compelling case that todays tech firms not only underperform those of earlier decades; it also explores how this overpromising and underdelivering is justified and explained away by cherrypicked narratives propagated by the self-styled prophets of the tech-enabled future. In Funks hands, these narratives are revealed for their emptiness and portrayed as phantasms and convenient fictions that serve the interests not of society at large, but those of the entrepreneurial ecosystems that thrive on hype and the fear of missing out. Clearly, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship are much too important for all of us to be defined by hypesters and evangelists. -- Rasmus Koss Hartmann * Associate Professor of Business, Copenhagen Business School. *
Thoroughly researched, well-reasoned, and clearly written, Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles is a critical balance to the breathless hype about todays hottest technologies. It also offers clear guidance for analysts and entrepreneurs who want to turn hype into reality. Highly recommended. -- Scott D. Anthony * Clinical Professor of Strategy, The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and author of The Little Black Book of Innovation *
Jeffrey Funks Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles is a book weve sorely needed for a long time. It gives clear-eyed explanations for why bubbles have become so prominent in technology markets in recent years and furnishes readers with sharp tools for cutting through bullshit and hype. -- Lee Vinsel * Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, and Author of The Innovation Delusion: How are obsession with the new has disrupted the work that matters most *
Over the past four decades I have had the opportunity to participate in many of the most successful technologically-centered development programs proffered by companies on a global basis. However, in the last decade I have sensed a growing divergence in the underlying depth of such entities, in terms not only of management expertise but, more importantly, in the ability to deliver meaningful and profitable products and services to the marketplace. For the first time, Jeffrey Funk has rigorously defined the core of this problem and speaks truth to power that technology development is no longer about creating meaningful and profitable solutions but much more about building a Unicorn Brand without out substance. VCs are going to hate this book which is a meaningful measure of its great contribution. The future is not what it used to be. -- Charles L. Mauro, CHFP * President/Founder of Mauro Usability Science *
An extraordinary book, worth reading by anyone interested in innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change. The book shows lucidly and with ample evidence that talk is increasingly dissimilar to walk in current business ventures. Serious doubt is healthy and rational, as exercised in Jeffs book. He shows that we are now in the middle of a perfect storm created by the oversupply of cheap money looking for investments in a marketplace of ideas where many false visionaries sell shallow promises and hype in all forms. For sure, progress will happen, but more slowly, and rarely as predicted by the prophets of hype. And progress will also have negative side-effects, such as the rise of fake information, polarization, threats to privacy, bio-threats, and ultimately the danger of the collapse of democracies and markets. -- Kalle Lyytinen * Iris S. Wolstein Professor in Management Design, Weatherhead School of Management *
"A welcome and balanced antidote to todays hype-driven tech marketplace. It is well-written, rich with examples, case studies, and insights that span decades and various industries." -- Roger Proksch * CTO of Oxford Instruments *
"A clear, bold, provocative guide on how to understand the changing world in context. This will help you see the world, fascinate you and offer you actionable guidance on what to do." -- Tom Goodwin * Consultant and Keynote Speaker *

Author Bio

Jeffrey Funk is a retired professor, now a consultant and Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and a winner of the NTT DoCoMo Mobile Science Award. He has 45 years of experience as a professor, consultant, and engineer in the U.S., Japan, and Singapore, the type of experience needed to see through the current hype about new technologies and startups. His PhD was from Carnegie-Mellon. He was most recently an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore.