Technology is a specialist area of investment that offers a strong growth opportunity for those able to back the right minds who can develop the iPads and smart phones of the future.

But how do you make sure you recommend a manager who can spot a future Steve Jobs and can tell when your Nokia phone is going to be ditched for touch screen technology? The dot-com boom and bust was of course a cautionary lesson, and fortunes can turn rapidly.

How should one assess the value of social media companies whose valuations are entirely exclusive of their incipient revenues, or the hardware companies that nascent cloud computing technologies threaten to make redundant but which are still thoroughbred income generators?

This guide will focus on the funds that back technology companies that an adviser may use to make some of these decisions, and explain the potential risks and rewards of investing in a such vehicles, how to make sure you select the right one for your client and how they perform in different market conditions.

Supporting material supplied by: Ben Seager-Scott, senior research analyst of BestInvest; Juliet Schooling Latter, research director of Chelsea Financial Services; and Jeremy Gleeson, manager of the Axa Framlington Global fund.