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A Literature Review: Where roletype Sits in the Research

roletype is an applied synthesis, not an invention from scratch. This is the honest account of which fields it draws on, which frameworks it borrows from, where it diverges — and the one question none of the existing models actually ask.

The question nobody else asks

There is a large, mature literature on technology cycles. Gartner describes where a technology stands. Carlota Perez explains why bubbles burst and how financial capital and production capital interact. Geoffrey Moore explains how products cross from early adopters to the mainstream. Everett Rogers maps how innovations diffuse through a population. Each is a genuine contribution — and each operates at the level of technologies, firms, or markets.

None of them asks the question this methodology asks: which position in the ecosystem has a functioning economic mechanism for which kind of person — and which does not? The Gartner curve tells you nothing about the freelancer who loses contracts in the crypto winter, or the educator who never monetizes out of idealism. Perez speaks about aggregates — nations, industries, capital flows — not the individual roles inside them. Moore is product-centric; this is actor-centric.

The academic neighbors that come closest still stop at the institutional level. Brea (2023) maps actor roles in digital ecosystems — at the firm level. The International Digital Innovation Alliance identifies twelve typical actors — all of them organizations. UNIDO's Cleantech Ecosystem Framework (Rufo et al., 2023) categorizes startups, government, universities, risk capital, corporations, incubators. Stratopoulos and Wang (2016) show that hype-cycle phases are measurable and identify three stakeholder groups — but not the individual roles within them. The literature maps ecosystems at the institutional level. Nobody maps the individual career paths inside them. That is the gap roletype fills.

The technology-cycle lineage

roletype inherits its macro picture from the canonical cycle frameworks. What it adds is an actor layer: given that a cycle behaves the way these models describe, which role should you occupy, and when?

Gartner Hype Cycle

Linden & Fenn (2003)

Maps where a technology stands on the adoption curve. roletype maps role viability to those phases — but adds who profits and who loses in each one.

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital

Carlota Perez (2002)

The macro theory behind the whole approach. roletype operationalizes Perez for individuals — “Perez for careers.” She analyzes capital and production; this analyzes the people positioned between them.

Crossing the Chasm

Geoffrey Moore (1991)

How products reach the mainstream. roletype asks the adjacent question Moore doesn’t: how the people behind those products survive economically across the chasm.

Diffusion of Innovations

Everett Rogers (1962)

Adopter categories (Innovators → Laggards) describe who adopts. roletype describes who profits from the adoption. Rogers maps demand; roletype maps supply. The two are complementary.

Amara’s Law

Roy Amara

We overestimate a technology short-term and underestimate it long-term. The Charlatan exploits the overestimation; the Veteran profits from the underestimation. Every role sits somewhere on this curve.

Industry structure: what it borrows from Porter

The chapter on outsiders and the wider ecosystem is structurally a Porter chapter, restated for individuals-and-cycles instead of firms-and-industries. It is worth being explicit about what is borrowed, what is adapted, and what is new — both for readers who know Porter and for intellectual honesty.

Borrowed

The Five Forces decomposition (Suppliers, Buyers, Substitutes, New Entrants, Rivalry) reappears in modified form — adapted from firms to individual actors, not discarded.

Borrowed & extended

Cluster Theory (Porter, 1990) grounds the geography argument — San Francisco vs. Freiburg, and the DACH compliance-anxiety market where some roles earn counter-cyclically.

Borrowed & added

Brandenburger & Nalebuff’s Co-opetition (1996) restores the Complementor — actors who profit from ecosystem growth regardless of who wins inside it (Chainalysis, Scale AI).

Not borrowed

Porter is firm-centric and static. roletype is individual-centric and cycle-dynamic: the forces don’t change, but their intensity changes with cycle phase. The “Inclusion Cut” (does a cycle-specialization produce individual upside, not just firm-level value?) has no Porter equivalent.

The career-science backbone

The assessment's diagnostic moves — the four-dimension fit model, the “sample, don't plan” advice, the distinction between a skill gap and a self-trust gap — are not invented. They have a clear academic ancestry, and naming it is part of the methodology's intellectual honesty: we did not invent person-environment fit, deliberate practice, self-efficacy, or affordable-loss reasoning.

Ikigai

García & Miralles (2017); Mogi (2018)

What you love × what you’re good at × what the world needs × what you can be paid for. The four scoring dimensions map onto these four circles, anchored to a specific technology wave.

Person-Environment Fit (RIASEC)

John Holland (1973 / 1997)

Career fulfilment depends on alignment between personality and work environment. This is the academic basis for treating a role mismatch as a correct signal — not a deficiency to grind through.

Planned Happenstance

Krumboltz (2009); Mitchell, Levin & Krumboltz (1999)

Career choice as iterative discovery rather than optimization. The academic basis for the “stop wandering, start sampling” reframe: try three micro-steps in parallel, follow the energy return.

Effectuation

Sarasvathy (2001, 2008)

Expert entrepreneurs reason from bird-in-hand and affordable-loss, not from up-front planning. Supports the claim that the niche is found, not chosen.

Deliberate Practice

Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993)

Foundational basis for treating a craft gap as overcome-able through structured practice — the difference between “I can’t do this yet” and “this role doesn’t fit me.”

Self-Efficacy & Imposter Phenomenon

Bandura (1997); Clance & Imes (1978)

The self-trust gap (“can I charge money for this?”) is a self-efficacy problem, not a skill problem — fixable through evidence collection and small wins, not more learning.

Skills Trump Passion

Cal Newport (2012, 2016)

Skill-mastery precedes passion, not the other way around. The explicit challenge to “follow your passion” advice, and the diagnostic anchor for consuming-vs-producing (the tutorial-consumer who never ships).

Network Position

Burt (1992); Granovetter (1973)

Structural holes and weak ties explain why Connectors and Brokers profit disproportionately — and why network position without substance doesn’t hold long-term (Podolny, 2005).

The full thematic bibliography — including the markets-and-asymmetry, survivorship-bias, and phase-gate literatures — lives on the Sources & References page.

The psychometric layer

The scoring engine itself rests on established psychometric principles: a 7-point Likert scale, criterion-referenced scoring (each role percentage is the share of that role’s own maximum your answers reached — comparable across test-takers, but not a population percentile), and response-pattern analysis that reads how you answered, not just what you scored. That meta-layer draws on Response Style Analysis (extreme, midpoint, and acquiescence response styles), the MMPI validity scales, and the commercial precedent set by CliftonStrengths for turning item-level response patterns into personalized insight. The dimensions themselves correlate with the Big Five. The mechanics are documented end-to-end in How the Assessment Scores Your Role.

What is genuinely new — and what this is not

Not everything is borrowed. The 23-role roster, the seven categories, the Charlatan anti-type with its sub-patterns, the obstacle taxonomy (craft gap / self-trust gap / role mismatch), and the Inclusion Test that decides which positional specializations count as career-relevant roles — these are roletype-specific constructs, assembled from the ancestors above but not reducible to any single one of them.

An honest caveat belongs here too. This is an applied synthesis written from inside three complete cycles (crypto, open-source/Linux, and desktop 3D printing, with AI live), not a peer-reviewed instrument with published validity coefficients. The role percentages are a structured decision aid, not a clinical diagnosis. The frameworks it borrows from arevalidated; the specific combination is a practitioner's model, offered with its sources visible so you can check the wiring yourself. A formal validation study is on the roadmap — until then, treat the output as a sharp, well-grounded hypothesis about where you fit, not a verdict.