Sources and Framework References

Gartner Hype Cycle

Linden & Fenn (2003); Gartner Inc.

Innovation Trigger → Peak of Inflated Expectations → Trough of Disillusionment → Slope of Enlightenment → Plateau of Productivity. Role viability is mapped to phases of this curve.

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital

Carlota Perez — Edward Elgar (2002)

The macro theory behind the playbook: how financial capital and production capital interact across a revolution. roletype operationalizes Perez for individuals — “Perez for careers.”

Crossing the Chasm

Geoffrey Moore — HarperBusiness (1991, 3rd ed. 2014)

The Technology Adoption Lifecycle and the challenge of crossing from early adopters to the mainstream. Influences the timing logic behind several entrepreneurial roles.

Diffusion of Innovations

Everett Rogers (1962)

Adopter categories (Innovators, Early Adopters, Early/Late Majority, Laggards) describe who adopts. roletype describes who profits from the adoption — the supply side to Rogers’ demand side.

Amara’s Law

Roy Amara

We overestimate a technology’s effect short-term and underestimate it long-term. The conceptual predecessor to the timing chapter — every role sits somewhere on this curve.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes

Charles P. Kindleberger (1978, 7th ed. 2011)

Historical bubble analysis. Supports the failure-modes and historical-parallels chapters.

Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

William H. Janeway — Cambridge (2012)

Argues that bubbles are necessary to finance infrastructure — directly relevant to the dotcom/railway argument.

Stabilizing an Unstable Economy

Hyman P. Minsky — Yale (1986)

The Financial Instability Hypothesis — why stability breeds the leverage that destabilizes.

The Delusions of Crowds

William Bernstein — Atlantic Monthly Press (2021)

Historical bubbles examined analytically across centuries.

Actor Roles in Digital Ecosystems

E. Brea — Technovation 122 (2023)

Framework for actor roles at the organizational level in digital ecosystems. The closest academic neighbor to this methodology — but it maps organizations, not individuals.

Ecosystem Actors in Innovation Ecosystems

International Digital Innovation Alliance (IDIA)

Twelve typical actors — startups, corporations, universities, investors, accelerators — all at the organizational level.

Global Framework for Cleantech Ecosystem Actor Engagement

Rufo, Lazariia & Chatburn — UNIDO / Cleantech Group (2023)

Actor categories in cleantech innovation: startups/SMEs, government, universities, risk capital, corporations, incubators. Validates the universality of ecosystem role-mapping across domains.

A Framework for Predicting Emerging Technology Adoption

Stratopoulos & Wang — Int. J. Accounting Information Systems 47 (2022)

Integrates Hype Cycles, Technology Diffusion, and the Resource-Based View. Identifies three stakeholder groups — but not individual roles.

The Social Shaping of Technological Revolutions

Carlota Perez (forthcoming)

Announced sequel examining the roles of Government, Business, and Civil Society — macro-level actor analysis, still not individuals.

Competitive Strategy

Michael E. Porter — Free Press (1980)

The Five Forces framework, adapted from firms-and-industries to individuals-and-cycles.

Competitive Advantage

Michael E. Porter — Free Press (1985)

The Value Chain framing — implicit backbone of the Layers-of-Competition section.

On Competition

Michael E. Porter — HBR Press (1990 / 1998)

Cluster Theory — grounds the geography argument (San Francisco vs. Freiburg; the DACH compliance-anxiety market).

Co-opetition

Brandenburger & Nalebuff — Currency Doubleday (1996)

Adds the Complementor as a sixth force to Porter — actors who profit from ecosystem growth regardless of who wins inside it.

BCG Growth-Share Matrix

Bruce Henderson — Boston Consulting Group (1968 / 1970)

Snapshot product-portfolio model; relevant to the timing and portfolio logic. Often confused with Three Horizons.

Hypercompetition

Richard D’Aveni — Free Press (1994)

Counter-position: in technology, sustainable competitive advantages are rare — advantage is a sequence of temporary moves.

Making Vocational Choices (RIASEC)

John L. Holland (1973 / 1997)

Career fulfilment depends on alignment between personality and work environment. The basis for treating a role mismatch as a correct signal, not a deficiency to grind through.

The Happenstance Learning Theory

John D. Krumboltz — J. Career Assessment 17(2) (2009)

Career choice as iterative discovery rather than optimization. The basis for the sampling rule: try three micro-steps in parallel, follow the energy return.

Planned Happenstance

Mitchell, Levin & Krumboltz — J. Counseling & Development 77(2) (1999)

Frames sampling as a deliberate, counselable activity — the predecessor to the 2009 paper.

Causation and Effectuation / Effectuation

Saras D. Sarasvathy — AMR 26(2) (2001); Edward Elgar (2008)

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

Working Identity

Herminia Ibarra — HBS Press (2003)

Identity transitions in careers — reinvention as an iterative, experimental process.

Balanced Skills and Entrepreneurship

Edward P. Lazear — American Economic Review 95(2) (2005)

Why generalists found companies more often — the jack-of-all-trades theory of entrepreneurship.

The Structure of Founding Teams

Ruef, Aldrich & Carter — American Sociological Review 68(2) (2003)

How founding teams actually compose themselves — relevant to partner-profile logic across roles.

The Role of Deliberate Practice in Expert Performance

Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer — Psychological Review 100(3) (1993)

The foundational deliberate-practice paper. The basis for treating a craft gap as overcome-able through structured practice.

Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control

Albert Bandura — W.H. Freeman (1997)

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

The Imposter Phenomenon

Clance & Imes — Psychotherapy 15(3) (1978)

The original imposter-phenomenon paper. Anchor for the Reluctant-Charger pattern — a self-efficacy gap, not a skill gap.

Mindset

Carol S. Dweck — Random House (2006)

Growth-vs-fixed mindset — whether craft gaps get treated as overcome-able or as identity verdicts.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Cal Newport — Business Plus (2012)

Skill-mastery precedes passion, not the reverse. The explicit challenge to “follow your passion” career advice.

Deep Work

Cal Newport — Grand Central (2016)

The producing-vs-consuming distinction — diagnostic anchor for the tutorial-consumer who never ships output.

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

Tim Harford — FSG (2011)

The case for parallel small-bets and survivable failures — pairs with Sarasvathy’s affordable-loss principle.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

compiled by Eric Jorgenson (2020)

Specific Knowledge and the four forms of leverage (Code / Media / Capital / Labor) — the backbone of the leverage and specific-knowledge axes.

The Millionaire Fastlane

MJ DeMarco — Viperion (2011)

The CENTS formula (Control / Entry / Need / Time / Scale) — the Founder-Scaler scalability test.

Grit

Angela Duckworth — Scribner (2016)

Grit as a non-credential asymmetric advantage.

Zero to One

Peter Thiel — Crown Business (2014)

Contrarian thinking as asymmetric advantage.

Structural Holes

Ronald S. Burt — Harvard (1992)

Network position as a predictor of economic success — bridging structural holes between otherwise-disconnected groups.

The Strength of Weak Ties

Mark S. Granovetter — Am. J. Sociology 78(6) (1973)

Why weak ties carry disproportionate information value — the mechanism behind the Connector role.

Status Signals

Joel M. Podolny — Princeton (2005)

Network position without substance doesn’t hold long-term — the structural failure mode of the pure Connector.

Human Capital

Gary S. Becker — University of Chicago (1964)

Skills as the foundation of economic success — complementary to Rule 1: skills are the constant, the role is the variable that monetizes them.

Now, Discover Your Strengths

Buckingham & Clifton — Free Press (2001)

Work with existing strengths rather than fixing weaknesses — the conceptual foundation for choosing a role by fit, applied to ecosystem roles.

The Market for ‘Lemons’

George A. Akerlof — QJE 84(3) (1970)

Information asymmetry as the foundation for extraction — the structural backdrop to several Charlatan patterns.

Theory of the Firm

Jensen & Meckling — J. Financial Economics 3(4) (1976)

Agency problems between principal and agent — how incentives diverge inside organizations.

In Search of New Foundations

Luigi Zingales — J. Finance 55(4) (2000)

Value extraction vs. value creation.

The Winner-Take-All Society

Frank & Cook — Free Press (1995)

Why small differences in ability translate into vast differences in reward in concentrated markets.

Information Rules

Shapiro & Varian — HBS Press (1998)

Network effects and lock-in in the network economy.

Platform Revolution

Parker, Van Alstyne & Choudary — Norton (2016)

Platform economics and winner-takes-all dynamics.

The Long Tail

Chris Anderson — Hyperion (2006)

Counter-position: digital markets also leave room for specialized niche players.

Vicarious Learning and the Myths of Management

Jerker Denrell — Organization Science 14(3) (2003)

Undersampling of failure — survivorship bias in management research.

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Random House (2001)

Popularization of survivorship and luck-vs-skill in outcomes.

Antifragile

Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Random House (2012)

Profiting from volatility — relevant to which roles gain from cycle turbulence.

First-Mover Advantages

Lieberman & Montgomery — Strategic Management J. 9(S1) (1988)

The first systematic analysis of first-mover advantages.

Pioneer Advantage: Marketing Logic or Marketing Legend?

Golder & Tellis — J. Marketing Research 30(2) (1993)

Shows first movers fail in nearly half of cases — tempers the “be first” instinct.

The Half-Truth of First-Mover Advantage

Suarez & Lanzolla — HBR 83(4) (2005)

Differentiates when first-mover advantages hold and when they don’t.

BitCoin Meets Google Trends and Wikipedia

Ladislav Kristoufek — Nature Scientific Reports 3, 3415 (2013)

Empirical r ≈ 0.88 between Bitcoin search-interest and price — validation for using search-interest as a phase-diagnosis tool.

Winning at New Products (Stage-Gate)

Robert G. Cooper — Basic Books (1986, 5th ed. 2017)

The original Stage-Gate framework; later “Next Gen” adds agile/iterative variants.

The Alchemy of Growth (Three Horizons)

Baghai, Coley & White — Perseus (1999)

The original Three Horizons of Growth model from McKinsey.

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries — Crown Business (2011)

Methodological foundation for the validation phase in modern phase-gate frameworks; referenced in the Founder and Customer-Development material.

Boundary Spanning Individuals

Tushman & Scanlan — Academy of Management J. 24(2) (1981)

Individuals who translate between domains are valuable long-term — nuances the more pessimistic portrayal of the Bridge Builder.

Communication and Persuasion

Hovland, Janis & Kelley — Yale (1953)

Perceived independence generates more long-term trust than evangelism — grounds the Educator subtypes.

The Rites of Passage

Arnold Van Gennep (1909; English 1960)

Foundational text on liminal states (separation → transition → incorporation) — grounding for the Tourist as a neutral starting state, not a failure.

The Ritual Process

Victor Turner — Aldine (1969)

Liminality as a productive in-between state — being a Tourist for a while is legitimate.

Permissionless Innovation

Adam Thierer — Mercatus Center (2014, 2nd ed. 2016)

Permissionless entry as a structural condition for innovation — applied here at the individual-career level (“first public output today, no permission needed”).

Situational Awareness

Leopold Aschenbrenner (2024)

The most important post-2023 AI macro analysis: AGI timelines via compute scaling, infrastructure mobilization, geopolitics. It answers “what’s coming?”; roletype answers “how do you position yourself?”

EU AI Act

European Commission (2024)

The regulatory framework shaping every AI role operating in Europe — directly affecting the Regulator, Bridge Builder, Lawyer, and Consultant roles.

Response Style Analysis (RSA)

Falk & Cai; Paulhus (1991)

Extreme (ERS), Midpoint (MRS), and Acquiescence (ARS) response styles. ERS — the tendency to use endpoints (1 and 7) — explains ~25% incremental variance across personality facets.

MMPI Validity Scales

Hathaway & McKinley (1943); Pearson Assessments

Clinical gold standard for analyzing how someone answered (not just what they scored). L, F, K, VRIN, and TRIN scales detect defensiveness, inconsistency, and acquiescence. The personalization block draws on this concept.

CliftonStrengths / StrengthsFinder

Gallup (Don Clifton); Technical Report 2019

Commercial precedent for using item-level response patterns — not just top scores — to generate personalized insight. 6,000+ unique insight variants based on how items within each theme were answered.

Normative vs. Ipsative Scoring

Cattell (1944); Clemans (1966)

roletype uses criterion-referenced (normative-style) scoring: each role percentage is the share of that role’s own maximum your answers reached, on a fixed 0–100 scale. It is not ipsative (not forced-relative to your other roles) and not a population percentile — but because the maximum is identical for everyone, an 84% Educator score means the same thing for every test-taker and is directly comparable across people.

Ikigai

García & Miralles (2017); Mogi (2018)

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

Big Five / NEO-PI-R

Costa & McCrae (1992)

The dominant personality model in academic psychology. The roletype dimensions (PT, IE, DI) correlate with Neuroticism (inverted), Openness, and Conscientiousness respectively.