I ran in to my former Gartner colleague Jackie Fenn last week at the CFO
Technology Summit. I walked away with a copy of her new book - she has
developed then popularized the Hype Cycle concept over the last decade - and
answers to some questions I should have asked her a decade ago.
The Hype Cycle has always been a good snapshot on what is emerging/maturing at the market level. But do you see clients use it on a periodic basis to reshuffle their IT investment priorities?
As well as using the content from the Gartner-populated hype cycles with (ie the 60-70 hype cycles that Gartner publishes each year on a broad range of IT topics), some of our clients use the model for internal planning and discussion. For example, in one of the case studies featured in the book, one client creates a hype cycle with relevant emerging technologies and divides it into two halves on either side of the Trough. For technologies to the left of the Trough, they ask themselves “what’s here that we could be using” – ie looking for opportunities for strategic advantage. For technologies to the right of the Trough, they ask “what’s here that we are not using yet” – ie, making sure they haven’t missed something that will cause them to fall behind.
Gartner's Hype Cycle and Geoffrey Moore's Chasm present two different perspectives on how technologies mature and grow into major companies and markets or fizzle. Has anyone tried to juxtapose the two?
Both models address the challenges of the early stages of a technology’s lifecycle. The key differences are that Crossing the Chasm focuses on the sell side (vendors) and market penetration, and the Hype Cycle focuses on the buy side (adopters) and deriving value from the investment. The Chasm is the basis for advice about marketing strategy, the Hype Cycle leads to advice on when to adopt an innovation for maximum value.
At the current time, what would you personally consider the most hyped technologies, and most under appreciated ones?
Virtual worlds have been highly hyped over the last couple of years and are currently falling into the Trough. All things Green, including Green IT, are set for more hype in the coming year, as well as cloud computing. Underhyped – 3D printing (highly disruptive).
In your career at Gartner, which technologies would you say Gartner missed in its Hype cycles - either positioned too early or completely missed and emerged in to a market category?
I’m not sure there’s much we’ve missed completely, but the consumer internet technologies (eg instant messaging, social platforms) tend to explode virally very rapidly, particularly compared to the rate that things move in the enterprise world, so they tend to be further along when we start to plot them on the hype cycle.
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