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The aim of the project on which this paper is based is to clarify – using Kondratieff theory of long-term socio-economic cycles – how the next (sixth) wave will look like. The focus lies in the socio-political aspect of change.

The article is a short and partial summary of a major project called “The Sixth Wave”. Workshops and surveys have been run in Finland and in Silicon Valley, California.

The project coordinators have been testing the theory of Kondratieff waves with various methods and have found it to be a convincing way to identify the patterns of change. It really brings in anticipatory power to its users.

There are lots of interesting implications of using K-Wave as a framework to understand next decades. More research regarding the future technologies in the K-Wave context should be undertaken.

The author believes that the K-Wave framework can be also regarded as anticipatory tool for business. The heavy emphasis in the author’s K-wave theory on resource productivity as a technology driver for the next wave makes it obvious that all technologies and businesses that aim at performing with greater output with less material or energy input are regarded as winners of their respective schemes in the emerging wave as the demand for these services will rise dramatically.

The author hopes the article will help people understand how fundamental the change K-Wave engenders in terms of democracy and trust, and that the article will also provide a more comprehensive view towards the transformation we are experiencing. The author anticipates that the idea of corporate social responsibility will become much more compelling in the sixth wave framework.

The project coordinators have given a whole new interpretation to the Kondratieff theory. They approach the theory with social science framework rather than customary economic framework, and have also tested their model with the project’s industrial partners.

This paper aims to discuss the possibility that Hyperloop using air levitation technology would create a revolution in the future industry of transportation. It also analyses the financing dimension in bringing Hyperloop technology towards full-scale commercialisation.

The study uses a case study of SpaceX Hyperloop. The analyses if Hyperloop would bring about a paradigmatic shift in the transportation industry are based on the classical economic theories of technology S-curves (Utterback and Abernathy, 1975; Fisher and Pry, 1971) and Schumpeter’s model of economic development (Schumpeter, 1939, 1967). The three factors influencing a paradigmatic change (a shift in technoeconomic paradigm) according to Freeman and Perez (1988) are also explored.

The analyses of findings have shown that Hyperloop has not yet met three factors influencing a paradigmatic change. However, the Hyperloop technology has the potential to create a new market of mass transportation. In terms of technology financing, SpaceX needs the right financing infrastructure – corporate venture arm, the crowdfunding platform, initial coin offering, as well as debt and equity financing to accelerate the process of commercialisation. As the project moves forward, Hyperloop technology would create a market for itself (innovation to create the demand and not demand to create innovation).v

Although the body of literature on technology management is already voluminous, there has been a scarcity of past research devoted to elucidating the technology disruption and technology financing. This research study has applied the concepts of technology S-curves to better understand if SpaceX Hyperloop would bring about a paradigm shift or revolution in the future of the transportation industry. The research findings would help fill an identified knowledge gap in the body of research in technology disruption and financing.

The “re‐industrialisation” of America is the dominant topic today. It has come about because the United States economy did not live up to its expectations during the decade of the 1970s. As to what has caused such low economic performance, many speculations have been advanced, such as big government, high taxes, monetary maladjustments, the energy shortages, the high prices of energy, etc. However, one group of economists have attributed the dismal economic performance during the 1970s to the phenomenon of the “long‐wave cycles”. This cycle is also called the Kondratieff cycle, and occurs at intervals of forty to sixty years in a socio‐economic system resembling that of capitalism. According to the proponents of this theory since the last part of the eighteenth century, industrial capitalism has exhibited long waves of cyclical fluctuation in income, employment and prices. These economists believe that the “long‐wave cycles” are what have underlined recent United States economic ills.

The paper aims to discuss the major and auxiliary types of cycles found in the literature.

The existence of cycles within economy and its sub-sectors has been studied for a number of years. In the wake of the recent cyclical downturn, interest in cycles has increased. To mitigate future risks, scholars and investors seek new insights for a better understanding of the cyclical phenomenon. The paper presents systematic review of the existing copious cyclical literature. It then discusses general characteristics and the key forces that produce these cycles.

The study finds four major and eight auxiliary cycles. It suggests that each cycle has its own distinct empirical periodicity and theoretical underpinnings. The longer the cycles are the greater controversy which surrounds them.

Cycles are monumental to a proper understanding of complex property market dynamics. Their existence implies that economies, whilst not deterministic, have a rhythm. Cyclical awareness can therefore advance property market participants.

The paper uncovers four major and eight auxiliary types of cycles and argues their importance.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the high rates of economic growth of the US economy and the remarkable acceleration of productivity growth since the mid‐1990s which is widely attributed to the modern information and communication technologies (ICTs).

After identifying three key factors for Solow's productivity puzzle and examining ICTs as a general purpose technology, three main channels of ICTs' impact in the economy are discussed: the first transmission channel is direct and consists of the effects generated by rapid technical progress within the ICT‐capital goods producing sector. The second one is due to the increasing accumulation and application of ICT goods and services in the user sectors. ICTs' positive spillover effects comprise the third transmission channel, i.e. they lead to “disembodied” increases in efficiency in the sense of “learning by doing” in the end‐user sector.

The diffusion of ICTs requires investment in all industries, i.e. the improvement of competitiveness on the macro level is strongly linked to investment activities and skill qualifications on the micro level.

The paper concludes with some comparisons between the US and the German economy where the acute need for infrastructure investment in East Germany in the 1990s limited the possibilities for investment in ICTs exactly at a time of high‐technological dynamism at the start of an upswing of a new Kondratieff cycle. Although some comparisons with the EU are made the impact of ICTs in other countries except the USA and Germany is not discussed more intensively.

A very useful source of information for graduate students and policy makers alike on the theoretical and empirical impact of new technologies on economic development.

This paper fulfils an information need for comparing growth in international perspective.

The paper aims to present an integrated foresight framework and method to support decision-makers who are confronted with today’s complex and rapidly changing world. The method aims at reducing the degree of uncertainty by addressing the inertia or duration of unfolding trends and by placing individual trends in a broader context.

The paper presents a three-layered framework and method for assessing megatrends based on their inertia or duration. It suggests that if long-term trends and key future uncertainties are studied in conjunction at a meta-level and placed in a broader multi-layered framework of trends, it can result in new insights.

The application of the proposed foresight method helps to systematically place a wide range of unrelated trends and key uncertainties in the context of a broader framework of trends, thereby improving the ability to understand the inertia, direction and mutual interaction of these trends.

The elaboration of identified trends and key uncertainties is partly case-specific and subject to interpretation. It is aimed at illustrating the potential use of the framework.

The paper presents a new approach that may, by itself or in combination with existing foresight methods, offer new means for anticipating future developments.

The use of the proposed framework has potential to provide better insight in the complexity of today’s rapid-changing world and the major transitions taking place. It aims to result in sharper foresight by reducing epistemic uncertainty for decision-makers.

The paper demonstrates how megatrends, Kondratieff waves and century-long trends can be placed in an integrated framework and analysed in conjunction.

Tempting as it is to be deterministic about world trade, Western economies are facing a number of new challenges. The collapse of hi‐tech stocks has prompted a re‐evaluation of the new economy, yet traditional economic models no longer offer reliable predictions for the future. New information and communications technology has unquestionably jump‐started America’s economy, yet its re‐found prosperity is in many ways illusory. While the economists debate the relevance of classical theory, one inescapable fact confronts the nations of Europe: the inexorable decline of their population – and with it, their intellectual capital.

This paper has both a theoretical and a practical dimension. It provides a brief overview of developments in the area of Value Added and Data Services, then goes on to report on a recent piece of research in the field. In theoretical terms it owes much to the so‐called ‘Information Economy’ school, which embraces not just the work of Machlup and Porat and of current investigators at among other places, the universities of Newcastle and Sussex but indeed, dates back to the 1930s and to research undertaken first by Kondratieff and then Schumpeter into the links between technological change and economic growth. The research which features in this paper is concerned with the potential contribution of advanced telecommunications to regional economic development, and specifically, with the impact of a new fibre optics‐based telecommunications network on the services sector in Northern Ireland.

There is no doubt that the application of microelectronic devices in processes and products can result in significant increases in labour productivity. There is considerably less agreement, however, on the implications of this for future employment prospects. The predictions which have been made concerning the impact of the microprocessor and its related technology on the economy and employment cover the entire range, from economic expansion and job creation at one extreme, to recession and large‐scale persistent unemployment at the other. A large number of these forecasts, however, are based on a limited analysis of the technological, economic, demographic and social factors involved and exhibit a general lack of awareness of certain basic historical trends in the labour market.

Economists John Day and David Parker examine the structural defects in the UK economy, the erratic recovery in world trade three years after the worst recession since the war and then turn their attention to studies of a noted Russian economist. Their unnerving conclusion is that after 20 years of relative prosperity, Britain could well be heading for a 30 year recession.