Mastering The Hype Cycle » Uncategorized

Pulling the Trigger

Jackie Fenn — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:01:16 +0000

As Seth Godin points out in a recent blog posting, there is often a long preamble to the trigger that launches an innovation on its path up to the Peak of Inflated Expectation. In Mastering the Hype Cycle, we track the advent of usage-based car insurance offerings (such as Snapshot from Progressive Insurance) back to vehicle tracking discussions in the 1970s. In this case, as in many others, it took decades for technology performance and costs to reach a point where realistic user trials, and eventually products and services, were technologically feasible and economically viable. There are often mini-peaks and troughs along the way – for example, breakthroughs in quantum computing are reported every few years. Designer and researcher Bill Buxton calls this phenomenon the long nose of innovation (a play on the “long tail” of product popularity).

Spotting the trigger of a hype cycle can be a challenging but highly rewarding activity – it’s mostly the domain of the aggressive, Type-A adopters who keep an eye on start-ups, go to VC events, and tour industrial and academic labs regularly. The payoff is first mover advantage, the penalty for getting it wrong is wasted investment and potentially tipping off fast followers about a strategically important bet. But for the growing number of organizations who are adopting a strategy of being selectively aggressive in areas that matter to them, learning to spot the trigger is an important skill to master.

Avatar’s James Cameron Talks about the 3D Hype Cycle

Mark Raskino — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:20:17 +0000

This week, in a keynote interview at a summit organised by the Hollywood magazine Variety, movie director James Cameron discussed the Gartner Hype Cycle. Below is a photo, kindly shared with us by Philip Leylveld, who created some of the slides used in the stage debate about 3D technology in the movies.

Forbes.com reports that when Variety’s David Cohen suggested 3D was going into the hype cycle trough of disillusionment, Cameron said: “This represents perception, not reality… we have to turn around that perception”.

We agree. After the initial wave of excitement, the idea that modern 3D TV and movies would be the next big thing, has been descending into the trough. But pioneers like Cameron don’t give up easily! They keep plugging away to fix the problems until an innovation can be placed firmly onto the slope of enlightenment – where predictable business returns start to multiply.

Hype Cycle stories on the Financial Times FT.Com

Mark Raskino — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:08:43 +0000

Financial Times contributors have written about Hype Cycles several times over the last few months, on a variety of subjects:
(FT registration needed)

Did you ever wonder who first drew on a page, that classic hype cycle curve shape? It was my colleague and friend Jackie Fenn in 1995. She’s still one of Gartner’s most senior analysts. Here’s a (FREE) video interview with the Financial Times, where she talks about the emerging technologies Hype Cycle 2010.

Classic hype cycle signal term: “DOA”

Mark Raskino — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:47:27 +0000

I love CNET’s “Buzz Out Loud” podcast and its very impressive presenters. Yesterday I was listening to the April 13 episode 1447 and a rapid fire interchange of views between a couple of long time anchors.

Molly Wood: “I feel like in a lot of ways you’ve just gotta let it go – like 3D is just kinda DOA”
Brian Cooley: “And the retailers know its just dead on the floor”

(27:15 to 27:22)

THAT term – DOA… just jumped out at me. It should be a classic marker signal for all hype cycle followers. You just know that the peak has passed when you start hearing that term.

A technology has barely arrived on the market and already, sentiment is turning negative.

I can take no position on 3DTV – its not my coverage as an analyst. But when I hear that word, it gives me a pretty strong indication about where I would place it on the hype cycle.

Listen out for DOA in your tech news reading and listening.

The Banking Services Hype Cycle explained on FT.com Video

Mark Raskino — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:38:27 +0000

Our colleague in Gartner Industries research, Alistair Newton, specialises in banking and financial services technologies. He recently appeared on the Financial Times website, interviewed in a video – explaining how the hype cycle works and some of the things that appear in the 2010 Hype Cycle for Banking and Investment Services, Customer Acquisition and Retention report.

“Cykl popularności” now available

Mark Raskino — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:47:25 +0000

We are very pleased that Wolters Kluwer have chosen to translate and publish our book ‘Mastering The Hype Cycle’ in a soft cover Polish language edition. It’s out now and easy to find online, for example here .

The 2010 Gartner Hype Cycles Are Getting Closer

Mark Raskino — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:21:51 +0000

It’s that time of year. Gartner Fellows Jackie Fenn, Brian Gammage and myself – together with a crew of other senior analysts, are busy going through draft Hype Cycle reports with a fine tooth comb to check for appropriate and consistent use of the research method. I count 88 hype cycles in work this year… probably a new record. We haven’t added up the total number of technologies yet.

I’m seeing a few interesting new draft titles that I hope make it all the way through to publication… broadcasting and entertainment, imaging and print services, pattern based strategy… I know the new one on Enteprise Architecture will be good – I just reviewed it myself.

We have multiple review stages. Each individual technology profile is reviewed by peer specialist analysts, each hype cycle is then reviewed by a wider group of domain analysts. Then those of us in the hype cycle special report team check each area has understood and applied the method properly… to avoid local group think or cross-research inconsistencies.

It will all come together for publication in a few weeks time. We’ll keep you posted.

Facebook feels the downforce of negative hype

Mark Raskino — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:59:54 +0000

In recent weeks it seems a real press and social backlash has built up, criticising Facebook … one of the most visible of the social networking systems. The headlines, some of which you can see below, might worry any business that has started to use social networking in their business, experimentally or in earnest.

Q: What does the hype cycle tell you as a manager?

A: 1) This was inevitable, and 2) it will pass.

This is the point in the emergence of a new technology when worriers walk away. This is the point where tenacious innovators start to make differential progress. Let’s be clear – this negative discourse phase is an inexorable and necessary process as the market feeds back issues that need to be improved, that are being learned from real world experience with a complex new technology. The more visible the original hype and the higher the level of inflated expectations… the more vigorous the debate on how it needs to evolve.

I do not track social network technologies in detail for Gartner, so I cannot predict the ultimate fate of this product and company. However Gartner’s overall position is that social networking (the technology category) will succeed and will eventually reach the plateau of productivity in business.

Remember the hypecyclist’s motto – don’t dive in just because it’s ‘in’ and don’t get out just because it’s ‘out’. Quiet, thoughtful perseverence through the trough of disillusionment is a stealthy competitive advantage opportunity for adoptive innovators.

Some Recent Facebook Headlines

“Crisis meeting for Facebook” BBC 13 May 2010
“Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking” The New York Times, 13 May 2010
“Facebook’s latest fracas: your privacy vs. its profit” The Washington Post, 4 April 2010
“Facebook criticised over latest privacy lapse” The Times May 6, 2010
“European commission slams Facebook privacy changes” MediaWeek 13 May 2010
“Facebook Users Risk Blackmail, Canada Privacy Chief Tells Globe Bloomberg” April 24
“Facebook in new privacy row” Telegraph- 23 Apr 2010
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy” Wired April 28, 2010

Download ‘Mastering the Hype Cycle’ to your Apple iPad !

Mark Raskino — Thu, 06 May 2010 08:16:11 +0000

Mastering the Hype Cycle - e-book on the Apple iPad

If you care about technology innovation you already know that Apple has taken orders for over a million of its new iPad e-reader devices in the first month since they were launched. Has any device in the history of IT ever generated so much hype? Just on a count of magazine front covers dedicated to it – I think Steve Jobs wins that accolade. We are already encountering clients who are experimenting with e-book readers in different ways in higher education, real-estate, government and even movie-making. I wonder how well those trials will be going a year from now? Signs of some early disillusionment are already in view: connectivity glitches, device security, theft and breakage rates, file formats, publishing business models and many other issues are starting to arise.
If you own an iPad and you deal in technology based inovation in your job – you need a strong understanding of how the Hype Cycle plays out, what happens at each stage and how to manage for it rather than be victim to it. Happilly our reference book about this key IT management phenomenon is now available in e-book format and you can get it on your iPad. It is published by Harvard Business Press via Amazon, so you get it using the Kindle reader for iPad. Myself, I already have a Kindle – so I asked my colleague Andrea DiMaio to test it out on his new iPad and he kindly sent us the picture above.

Ten ‘next big things’ for hype cyclists

Mark Raskino — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:30:21 +0000

As we have commented before in this blog, the web search term ‘next big thing’ is one remarkably simple yet powerful method corporate IT professionals can use, to scan the horizon for technologies and concepts entering and rising up the hype cycle.

Today I spent an hour browsing Google and Bing news search results for this key phrase much beloved by journalists. Here are the best results.

Of course, some of these won’t be news to you and you may be surprised that some of them are news to anyone. But ‘new’ is a concept relative to your position in the market. The media outlets in this listing serve very different audiences – some niche, some general – and in different geographies. The point is to keep a watch outside your immediate domain, to understand what others are seeing and to assess how they are being influenced.