Mastering The Hype Cycle

Generally speaking the hype cycle is much better for tracking a generic market innovation (e.g. ‘mobile email’) rather than products or companies (e.g. ‘Blackberry’).  However the hype cycle is a bit of a Swiss Army Knife – usually fairly useful when you don’t have the perfect tool for the job. With that in mind I [...]

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Once you have decided that this is the right innovation wave, you must judge carefully when you will you go with it– before the peak, at the peak, after the peak? Perhaps you want to wait until almost the trough. Maybe you should take it easy and ride this one in on the plateau. Make [...]

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Every now and then you need to inspire your internal audience and remind them what the power of the microprocessor will make possible. Moore’s law isn’t done with us yet. Here are some links to videos – not all of them brand new – but still likely to help drop jaws and get people talking. [...]

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In my working lifetime I’ve lost count of the occasions when I have faced senior decision makers who, with complete conviction, declared a technology would never be significant for their business.  Like the marketing executive who told me the Web was just like Prestel and equally doomed to fail.  And another who suggested the only [...]

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A recent TechCrunch blog post by Sarah Lacy used the headline ‘Bloggers: Let’s band together and stop the hype cycle’ . In the piece she is really reacting to the extremes of buzz building and then cynical critique of new ideas by silicon valley commentators online. Pointing to examples like Google, Twitter, Youtube and Loudcloud [...]

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As you get ready to go, remind yourself of the key behavior that will help differentiate you from the competition – you choose the innovation wave, it doesn’t choose you. No matter how inviting it looks – if isn’t the right one, don’t go with it just because the crowd of surfers around you seem [...]

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[Disclaimer - this post DOES NOT constitute an update to Gartner's hype cycle position on microblogging*] One of the many indicators that the peak of hype has been passed, is when the tenor of media articles about the technology innovation starts to turn sour.  Sometimes that is centered on the lead player in the emerging [...]

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During a recent trip to Serbia, I delivered three presentations: IT and the Economy, IT Cost Cutting and the Hype Cycle. Talking for two and a half hours takes it’s toll so Petar Kocivc and our local team kindly arranged for an entertainment interlude between presentations by local TV magician and VIP Big Brother contestant [...]

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David Phillips at Leverwealth has created an online PR hype cycle showing how Web 2.0 has generated a a resurgence of interest and propelled the field toward the plateau of productivity. Hans Uszkoreit gives a history of the machine translation hype cycle , concluding (hoping?) that the technology is finally on the slope of enlightenment. He also points [...]

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Once you get started, it’s very easy to get carried away and to be tempted out of your depth. Remember that’s what the hype is all about – getting swept along with the enthusiasm of a market crowd. It’s a human anthropological trait. We all holler out from the stands at a football game in [...]

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