Mark RaskinoSometimes industry hype about newer technologies and other innovations can become overbearing and it provokes a backlash. The technology media of course feeds us what we want to read about. We like to read about shiny new things but we also like to read about failures. It is human nature.
Over the last decade internet based media have amplified these effects. The blogosphere and Twitter in particular are very fast moving – leading some to write before thinking sometimes, just in order to be first. This has reached the point where people are starting to question the balance of good and harm done by commentary at Internet speed. That reflection is no bad thing – we must learn, over time, how best to master these valuable media.
As I explain in another blog today - the repeated pattern of rising social excitement follwed by early delivery disappointment can never be completely prevented. We call it the Hype Cycle and it is inevitable – though its effects on your company can be moderated by the application of effective innovation managment techniques.
Category: Strategy Tags: Hype Cycle
2 responses so far ↓
1 Adam Collins April 29, 2009 at 11:24 am
Having been a fan of the HC for a while now it never ceases to amaze me how many organisations don’t know about it. I’ve recently undertaken a piece if work demonstrating to a customer the benefits they can get from this forward thinking approach. I’m afraid though that the world and in particular the UK is still a long way off the slope of enlightenment. The biggest issue is based on simply the time and effort in baselining where they are across the people, process and technology points within their business. Good for consultants, particularly in such unprecedented economic times. There was never a better time to demonstrate the value of IT to support the much needed change.
2 Mark Raskino April 30, 2009 at 3:23 am
Thanks Adam – that’s why Gartner made the time and resource available for Jackie and I to publish the Hype cycle book … we think it’s a management tool that has very wide applicability and we’d like to see it used more. The results so far are encouraging – we are starting to see people use it beyond IT in domains such as green tech, food tech and cellular biology.
Within IT, we are encouraging clients to compose their own unique hype cycles, drawing on our published ones. This helps them think about the risk, return, timing and trend pressures on their different newer technology projects, comparatively.