Living Up To The Hype (Or Not)

The hype is everywhere. It’s easy to get swept up in a world full of the “next big things.” Easy — but as Karen Webster pointed out in her commentary this week, not entirely wise, because lots of things seem too good to be true for the very reason that they are too good to be true. Bitcoin, marketplace lending — pick your poison — they came to disrupt, but the jury is still out on whether they can ever achieve that goal. The global citizen and international nomad may change the nature of work around the world, but they need a “finabler” to help them do it. Consumers may love meal kits, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re excited for heavy-handed curation and subscription-level commitment. And new EU regulations like GDPR may be a sea change in how business worldwide will get done, but no one seems to know if that change will come as an easy, rising tide or a tsunami of transformation.

$9.7 billion: Total projected spending on blockchain solutions for businesses by 2021.

88 percent: The amount of value LendingClub’s stock has lost since its 2014 IPO.

1,250: The number of ATMs Travelex has at ports of entry and tourist locations worldwide.

100: The approximate number of recipes Chef’d tests each month.

4 percent: The share of annual worldwide turnover businesses can be fined for failing to comply with GDPR.