Mastering The Hype Cycle

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 ‘Big Lale’ ( Lazar Antić ). After some very slick rope cutting and ping pong ball tricks, he decided to take on our Hype Cycle book!.

1) He tears our book to pieces..

2) He works some magic..

3) He produces 3 fresh copies from the wreckage!

Big Lale told me he has been doing magic on TV for so many years, he started out in black and white. All that practice certainly pays off.  It made me wince to see him tear up a copy of our book ( and it takes some strength too ) – he even asked me to tear up some pages. Then he placed them in a magic box which was filled to overflowing. Even at very close range I just could not figure out how all the torn material could be replaced by three copies within that small magic box he had on the table.  Amazing!

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 out insightfully that this field is one where the fractal nature of the hype cycle may come into play: “Perhaps in fact the Hype Cycle is fractal, each slope containing smaller mini peaks and troughs within the overall pattern. It may prove hard to distinguish clearly between those old “inflated expectations” and the current widespread “hype” that there will be genuine productivity when Enlightenment is attained and new projects come to fruition within the (proverbial) next five years. Or to put it more bluntly, will MT ever grow into a visible business over and beyond its role as a technology add-on?”

Ryan Saghir also gives a brief history of satellite radio’s journey through the hype cycle, and triggers some lively debate about whether Sirius XM is in the trough of disillusionment.

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 a way we would never do in private.
How risky does this innovation look and what stage is the wave really at?  Even if you personally like the look of it, consider whether your current organization really has the cultural appetite and ability to come with you.  If not, are you really prepared to swim out alone as a maverick?  There may be a lot stake.  You might be able to swim that far out and survive on your own until the wave builds up and everyone wants to join. Or you might get cramp and find yourself out in the cold, gulping for air. If you decide to go, consider whether the waters are safe. Maybe you are tough enough to take getting stung a couple of times along the way. But check for sharks – there are people out there so desperate to say anything that will sell their ideas, they might eat you alive.

For an overview of ‘Rules for Riders’ see previous post

I’m really enjoying the first UK edition of Wired magazine.

This popular newsstand journal has given a monthly boost to corporate IT and business innovators all over the world for years, but now there is British and an Italian version – both with a large amount of local editorial content. Originally based out of the MIT media lab, now operated by Conde Nast, it sometimes goes on eclectic wanderings but never fails to inspire and thought-provoke. Jackie and I both love Wired and we know they like the Hype Cycle. It was included in the US edition some years ago and you can see editor Chris Anderson talk about it within a video of his 2004 TED presentation about the long tail.

BUT I am troubled. Something at the back my mind said ‘oh no … not NOW people!’  They could have launched this anytime in the last decade but they chose a deep recession year.  I was immediately reminded of the truly wonderful European edition of Business 2.0 magazine, which launched in 2000, at the peak of a boom but quickly withdrew in 2001.

I really hope British and Italian innovators support their local Wired editions. The stories those magazines provide will help your own storytelling no end. Winning hearts and minds inside dull grey corporate offices is never easy – this is fodder you need.

Use it or lose it.

P.S.  What’s that? Yes, we did publish ‘Mastering the Hypecycle’ in October 2008 during the week of the stock market crash – what’s your point?    Fortune favours the brave.

If you are old enough, or a film fan, you will recall the famous speech by Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street where he espouses the idea that ‘greed is good’‘ There is a double edge to using that analogy to support my argument – but here goes!…

In a non-tech corporation, the biggest problem in your business-IT function isn’t controlling the hype of an over zealous IT industry anymore. Maybe it was a decade ago, but not today. Many of the incumbents are happy to keep taking repeat maintenance revenues for the stuff you already have without offering game changing innovations or seriously helping you to internally-market new ideas. They are battoning down their revenue stream hatches, waiting for the recession storm to pass.

So if you hope to ‘leverage the downturn’* by introducing major new technology enabled business process changes, business model changes or competencies … where will the energy come from?  Mature, large company management cultures are usually dominated by silo complexity and political inertia. Add the fear of recession job losses and they can go into a glacial torpor – the hope being that ‘if we change nothing we might survive’. Nobody dares take a risk that would mark their card personally, notching them up the the HR department’s severance-list spreadsheet .

Right now, I think some industry hype is a valuable thing. It’s maintaining a sense of momentum under very difficult circumstances. It creates a sense of compulsion – to investigate at least, to experiment hopefully and to implement perhaps.  So think twice before hitting out at cloud hype, green hype and social media hype. These are high energy sources that might overcome inertia and help your industry move on to a new level of performance over the next few years. Like all energy sources they are precious and deplete all too rapidly.

If you think hype offends, try moving your project idea through the business case approval process, to action, during the trough of disillusionment.  Or wait 5 to 10 years until the plateau of productivity is very firmly established…. assuming your position and your company survive that long.

Innovators question everything – including the received wisdom that hype is a problem. Exploit this powerful market/social force to your advantage, rather than sitting on the sidelines hoping the recession will just go away.

Hype will help power the creativity in ‘creative destruction’. One person’s hype is another person’s evangelism anyway. Hype forms in our collective social excitement about the new and the novel. It is both necessary and inevitable – so use it.

* I so dislike this expression but it’s short and functional

At a recent Gartner event I conducted an informal poll of 16 emerging technology managers. The results showed that most were experiencing relative stability in their staffing and funding. Less than 10% had experienced, or were projecting, staff cuts, and half were expecing to grow their staffing and funding levels by 2010. This may be counter to expectations in an economic downturn, but in fact mirrors our experience with inquiries from our clients, where we are still seeing a strong level of interest in emerging technologies and innovation. The lessons from the dot com era, when many organizations were blindsided by the rapid adoption of the Internet and felt they should have been better prepared, have been relatively enduring. Since that time we have seen a steady stream of interest from clients who want to formalize their emerging technology activities and processes to make sure they don’t miss “the next big thing”. Organizations realize that they need to innovate even (especially?) in tight economic times.

However, the same poll showed that around half of the organizations were shifting toward shorter term results, and focusing more on cost reduction than on growth. Still, over a quarter were refocusing on growth and longer term activities. This reflects the overall mood that companies feel they need to emphasize cost reductions and short term results in the current economic climate, but also shows that these trends are never “one size fits all”. The importance of making sure that your innovation activities are aligned with your organizational scope and goals - be they cost-cutting, growth, or a balance of each – is still paramount.

As we have seen, some Gartner employees can paint, very well.  Now it seems some others can write poetry – though I will leave it to you to decide how well.

Here is a Hype Cycle Haiku by analyst Wes Rishel

New thoughts exciting hopes
Trying them stirs up doubt, but
Progress can prevail

And here are a couple of verses by analyst Nick Jones

The optimists buy, when the hype is too high,
While tech’s risky and too immature,
The pessimist waits, until it’s too late,
And the ROI’s totally sure
 
The sensible man, delays, if he can,
Till the point when the hype cycle turns,
He’s happy, not stressed, because he invests,
At the time that’ll bring best returns
 

 Well I’m impressed. Thanks gentlemen!

A lot of Gartner staff have hidden talents outside work. For example in Germany, Senior administrator Sabine Bieder, is an artist and just recently she has done a painting inspired by the Hype Cycle!  It hangs in Gartner’s Munich offices and I’m really looking forward to seeing it but for now a photo will have to do.

The colour intensity around the peak of hype uses vibrant Hype Cycle book-cover orange, tapering off into cool Gartner brand blue. The bubbles floating across the piece add a humourous touch.  So does that strategic gap in the canvasses between the slope and plateau – chasm crossing perhaps? Simply wonderful.

Paddle first

Get a good feel for the groundswell before you decide to go for it. Start looking at the innovation quietly and remotely. Do your research online and through peer network conversations. Read reports and probe stories. Be a ‘mystery shopper’ for early versions of the innovation. Don’t get too close, too early to those people marketing the concept – because once they sense your interest they will sell you two wetsuits, a dune buggy and a board rack for your car before you have really decided to go for a surf. There’s nothing more gullible than an over-equipped rookie and nothing sadder than the garage sale that usually follows. Experiment in your own way, wearing your old shorts and using a second hand board you borrowed from a friend. Keep your initial experimenting cheap, cheerful and private until you gain confidence. If you like the feel of this innovation, you can invest later.

For an overview of ‘Rules for Riders’ see previous post

1. Study the waters

When you are considering a new category of innovation, take time to review its history. What similar waves of change have gone before and how did they play out? Were they short and furious or heavy and slow moving? Was it a perilous peak? Did many people go under in the trough? How did the winners ride it and what can you learn from them? You need to assess the ‘swell’ around this one and decide whether it’s a good time to go out in the water. The economic times may not be conducive – don’t get on the wave if there’s a storm coming and you are bound to be thrown off. The whole environment could be over-heating, you need to watch out for bubble market conditions that are pulling this innovation into turbulent water. Is the innovation space choppy, overlapping and incoherent or can you see a clear wave pattern forming. Are there many others close by who might get in your way or is the coast clear?

For an overview of ‘Rules for Riders’ see previous post