As we apply Jackie’s original Hype Cycle more and more we continue to discover important extensions and additional observations of its behaviour. One recent example is the Industries Horsetail. This simply observes that during the first half of the cycle the path of expectations is fairly consistent across all industries. However in the second half – different industries have varying inclines of slope and differring heights of plateau. This happens because over time, markets discover that the innovation is more use and with faster returns in some applications than others. Think for example how RFID has uses in different industries, some of which are simple and fast return, others are more complex and slow to deliver. I have recently written a Gartner Research Report for clients which explains it in more detail ( ref G00161575 ).
The Industries Horsetail Hype Cycle Variant