Mastering The Hype Cycle

We continue to see hype cycles explored in interesting ways beyond the IT industry: One of my favorite recent reads, which I am still figuring out how to put into action, is Timothy Ferris’s 4-hour Work Week. In the 4-hour Workweek Hype Cycle, “Brick” asks whether the hype cycle applies to the ideas in this very successful book, [...]

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A smart client from a cool Spanish retail company asked an interesting question this week: does recession slow or accelerate things passing through the trough-of-disillusionment?   The answer is – it depends. There are multiple factors at work pulling against each other. However I think we can develop a structured way of assessing it… I have [...]

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The graphic above was originally drafted to be an end-piece for the book – a ‘photocopy and keep’ aid to help people remember the realities of the Hype Cycle’s twists and turns as they wrestle with project situations and perhaps need to regain their perspective. For both Jackie and I, this was our first book [...]

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“Expectations are dangerous when they are both high and unformed.” This is a line from Eva in the novel “We Need To Talk About Kevin”, referring to her expectations of motherhood. In a series of letters to her estranged husband, Eva deliberates on the lead up to her son’s Columbine-style shooting of his classmates and [...]

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Many thanks to Australia’s ‘AFR Boss’ business magazine for a kind review in its February print edition, which places our book alongside some prestige company!

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As we have said before in this blog, the phrase ‘next big thing’ is a giveaway to Hype Cycle watchers. When you see this buzz-phrase in a few media articles, it’s a good indicator of a new cycle forming or in play. It gets used many times – around the technology trigger, the peak and [...]

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A slightly ominous posting today (Friday 13th) Last week I passed by a sad sight in Hounslow, London UK  that I just had to photograph and share. If you have read chapter one of the book you will know the case. When you are deciding what to cut from your portfolio in response to the recession, beware the strategic consequences of [...]

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Most people use the hype cycle to compare and contrast the developmental stages of multiple technologies or innovations at a fixed point in time. These help our clients make appropriate portfolio trade-off,  and innovation adoption timing decisions. All of the current 50+ Gartner published hype cycles are like this and they focus on different domains. [...]

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Over a decade on into the full onslaught of internet delivered digital media, books can seem a bit of an old fashioned way to access new ideas. Even so – when people need to delve deeply they still need books, so their arrival and sales can be useful datapoints for hype cycle watchers. For example, [...]

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… our book did!  TED is renowned as one of the coolest emerging tech conferences there is – so we are really pleased. Thanks to whoever made that selection. Thanks also to our ‘reporter on scene’ Gartner Consulting colleague Jennfier Arzonetti – who snapped this picture. (hey Jennifer, how did you get to go?  - tell us the secret and [...]

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