Why AI Feels Overhyped Now— and How It Still Reshapes the Next Decade I’ve watched a few revolutions roll through: mainframes to PCs, dial-up to broadband, brick-and-mortar to dot-com. The pattern isn’t mysterious anymore. New tech shows up, excitement explodes, money rushes in, and for a while it looks like the future is arriving on Thursday. Then reality intrudes: real use cases, real costs, real risk. Doubts surge. Half the projects get shelved. And yet—the ideas with imagination + discipline survive, grow up, and quietly (sometimes not so quietly) change the world. Call that arc whatever you like—the Hype Cycle (coined in the ’90s) is a handy shorthand. It has five phases that often overlap: Spark: A new capability appears; imaginations light up and expectations…

The Musk Model Under Stress In business school and boardrooms alike, we learn that vision is the spark. There have been a lot of sparks over the years that have not resulted in thriving businesses. That’s because it takes systems, structure, and sustained attention to turn that spark into a thriving enterprise. And while few have sparked as many transformative ideas into billion-dollar entities as Elon Musk, we’re now seeing the strain of stretching that vision too thin. Tesla’s recent Q2 delivery numbers—down 13.5% year-over-year—don’t spell collapse. But they signal something important: not all leadership gaps show up as crises. Some show up quietly, in misaligned teams, slowed innovation, and confused customers. And when similar signs appear across multiple Musk-led companies, it’s time to ask…

Why Our National Blind Spot Could Rewrite the Future There are a lot of things I don’t worry about anymore. Getting promoted. Buying the latest phone. Finding the right tie. But one thing I still worry about—probably more than I should—is the national debt. Not because I think it’s going to collapse the country tomorrow. Not because I have some macroeconomic theory to push. I worry because I’ve been around long enough to know that when something looks too big to fail, it usually means no one’s planning for when it does. Right now, the U.S. debt sits above $35 trillion. That’s a number we toss around like confetti at a budget hearing—vague, distant, and someone else’s problem. And adding another $3.5 billion is just…