Bubbles

Many of you may have seen a bunch of articles asking if we’re in another tech bubble.  There was an excellent one today in The Silicon Alley Insider (they conclude we’re not and their reasoning is pretty sound and fact-based) and it got me thinking about the nature of “bubbles” and how tech is far from the only area to experience them.  In fact, I’m going to posit that your business may fall victim to them at times.  Let me explain.

Here is the definition of a bubble from the article:

…We have to ask what a bubble is. And the important thing to get is that a bubble is a mass delusion. Technology investor and visionary Peter Thiel has a good definition which boils down to this: a bubble is a) a widespread, intense belief that’s b) wrong.  In other words, a bubble is what happens when the vast majority of people believe (and are putting their money into) things based on a fundamentally wrong-headed notion.

I like that, and I think it’s applicable to people just as much as it is to businesses.  We can start with many of the “celebrities” that populate so much of our popular culture today.  Many people seem to believe things about them (they’re role models, they’ve got talent) that are fundamentally wrong.  Add most of the “artists” we hear who are incapable of performing without electronic enhancement if, in fact, they’re the ones performing their music at all.  Most of the time, they’ve taken a riff from someone else’s work and gone from there.

Then there are some “thought leaders” out there who haven’t had an original thought in a decade.  Unfortunately, a good portion of the traditional trade press (which makes a lot of its dough from subscriptions and ads from these some folks) doesn’t point out that these emperors are naked.  There is a leadership bubble in many sectors – an intense belief in people who are just wrong.

Sorry for the snark today but am I off-base?  Are we living in a time of mass delusion?  Or am I the only delusional one?