Unravelling Gartner's Hype Cycle

Technology companies talk up their products and technologies. Let’s not mince words — they’re hype merchants.

They hire public relations consultants and advertising agencies to whip up excitement on their behalf.

Sometimes they convince the media to follow suit and enthuse about their new gizmos or ideas.

Occasionally, the media’s constant search for hot news and catchy headlines leads to overenthusiastic praise — or a journalist swallowing a trumped-up storyline.

Recognising the hype pattern

None of this will be news to anyone in the business. What you may not know is that the IT industry’s shameless self-promotion is recognised and enshrined in Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

 Gartner analysts noticed a pattern in how the world, and the media, respond to new technologies: an initial burst of excitement, followed by disillusionment, then a more balanced view.

This observation evolved into what Gartner calls the Hype Cycle, often shown as a simple curve on a graph. The horizontal axis shows time, while the vertical axis represents visibility.

The hype cycle's five phases

In the first phase, the “technology trigger”, a product launch, engineering breakthrough or some other event generates huge publicity.

At first, only a narrow audience is in on the news. They may hear about it through the specialist press and start thinking about its possibilities.

Things snowball. Before long, the idea reaches a wider audience and the mainstream media pays attention.

Interest builds until it reaches the second phase — the “peak of inflated expectations”. At this point the mainstream media becomes obsessed – you can expect to see muddle-headed but enthusiastic TV segments about the technology.

You know things have peaked when current affairs TV shows and radio presenters start covering the story.

At this point, people typically start to have unrealistic expectations. While there may be some successful applications, there are often many more failures behind the scenes.

Trough of disillusionment

 Once disappointments become public, the hype cycle moves into what Gartner poetically calls the “trough of disillusionment”. The mainstream press will turn its back on the story, others will be critical. Sales may drop. The idea falls out of favour and seems unfashionable.

Some ideas sink without trace, but more often they re-emerge on the “slope of enlightenment”. This is where companies and users who persisted through the bad times come to a better understanding of the benefits on offer. By this stage, most of the media has lost interest; progress continues quietly in the background.

Finally, the cycle reaches the “plateau of productivity”, when the benefits of the technology are widely understood and accepted.