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 people likely to use their mobile phones to access data in an airport would be the ’sandals and ponytails brigade’
Well – even Email was hyped once. As this Honeywell advert from 1977 demonstrates.
‘What the Heck is Electronic Mail’
Thanks to Thomas Noggle – a Gartner Emerging technologies best practices council research specialist in the US -who brought it to my attention.
The face in the picture looks just like the ones who are all using Email today … to type hostile copy and block business cases for corporate exploration of Twitter, Second Life, Blogging, Wikis and the rest. However there is a difference 20 years on from this ad… today’s CEO knows tech adoption timing can be a matter of significant competitive difference. Those who sneer and obstruct without careful research and analysis will be remembered.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Timo Elliott // Apr 21, 2009 at 1:11 pm
To be fair, there are also a plethora of over-hyped technologies that didn’t make it… (although social media is not one of them)
2 Mark Raskino // Apr 21, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Timo – thanks for your comment. What examples do you have in mind?
There certainly are some complete failures, but fewer than people think. Most major technologies that get any serious hype exposure just take a lot longer to come good than people expect (sometimes many years) Things can spend quite a long time in the trough.
That’s really a key management value insight of the Hype Cycle – to help people in the adopting (buying and applying) organisations work out the *real* time-frame.
For example – PDAs with handwriting recognition came (1992) and went (1995) in the form of the Apple Newton. They then spent 3 years in the trough until the arrival of the Palm Pilot in 1998.
We have a particular symbol (a crossed circle) we use in our published cycles. It’s used if the Gartner analyst predicts the technology will ‘fall off’ and won’t get to the plateau of productivity. It’s surprising how infrequently is it used.
3 Anthony Bradley // Apr 29, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I might argue that is was under hyped considering its incredible penetration, over use, and culturally addictive characteristics.
4 Mark Raskino // Apr 29, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Anthony – I agree. In the book we list hype cycle variants including the ‘high flyer’, where the eventual value expectations level of the plateau is higher than the initial hype peak. Web search might be another example.