Kondratiev Cycle

Kondratiev cycle is the long-wave macro framework at the center of E162.康波周期中的AI：新技术总在萧条期爆发，bad times make good people. The episode treats it as a way to connect technology innovation, profit cycles, investment behavior, social change, and asset allocation over decades. Its core discipline is mechanism: ask why a wave exists, why it reverses, and how shorter cycles nest inside it, rather than treating cycle years as a fixed timetable.

The source’s distinctive claim is that AI can be both the core technology of a sixth long wave and a continuation of the information revolution. In that reading, AI does not replace the information era; it intensifies the ability to process, recombine, and absorb information across society.

Key Claims

• Long-wave analysis should study drivers and reversals, not only count years.
• New long waves need more than a single invention: production technology, key inputs, infrastructure, and a new techno-economic mode have to come together.
• Depression or late-decline phases can push firms and capital to search for new profit sources, linking the cycle to Depression Driven Innovation.
• AI may mark a new long wave while still sitting inside the larger information-technology revolution.
• Long-wave judgment should influence Macro Asset Expression and Investment Risk Management, but it is too coarse to be a precise trading clock.

Connections

• Joseph Schumpeter and 周金涛 — economic-cycle and strategy-research lineage invoked in the source.
• Technology Installation Cycle — innovation-stage frame used alongside the economic-cycle frame.
• Depression Driven Innovation — weak-period innovation pressure.
• AI Investment Metrics and AI Equity Valuation Risk — shorter-term AI business and valuation frames placed inside the long wave.
• Market Regime Shift and Geopolitical Cycle Macro — adjacent ideas for changing macro regimes and constraints.