Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles

“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 don’t 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 America’s great engine of growth—entrepreneurs 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 * “Funk’s 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 today’s 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 Funk’s 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 today’s 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 Funk’s Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles is a book we’ve 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 Jeff’s 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 today’s 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 * “This is an exceptionally well researched analysis of the growth and collapse of hype and bubbles across many industry sectors and technologies. Whilst it concentrates on the 21st century, there are also lessons from the more distant past that shed extra light on this phenomenon. It is an excellent, must-read book.” – Richard J. Self LLM FHEA IDF-III * Senior Lecturer in Governance of Advanced and Emerging Technologies, University of Derby * “Filled with stunning statistics like “the percentage of startups profitable in the year before their IPO fell from 90% in 1980 to 12% in 2022”, this book could not be more timely.” – Gary Marcus * Founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber), Author of Taming Silicon Valley *

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.