Unravelling the Hype Cycle

IT companies talk up their products and technologies.

They hire public relations consultants and advertising agencies to whip-up excitement.

At times they convince people in the media to enthuse about their new gadgets.

The media’s search for hot news and headlines can lead to overenthusiastic praise or a gullible journalist swallowing a trumped-up storyline.

None of this is news to people working in the business. The IT industry’s  shameless self promotion has been formally recognised in Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

Gartner noticed a pattern in the way the world (and the media) viewed most new technologies. It starts with a burst of excitement rapidly followed by a sigh of disillusion and, eventually, balance.

This observation evolved into the hype cycle.

Gartner's hype cycle has five distinct phases

The first phase, Garter calls it “technology trigger”, happens when a product launch, engineering breakthrough or other event gets publicity. At first the new idea is exposed to a narrow audience, maybe through the specialist press, and people think about its possibilities. Things snowball. Before long the idea reaches a wider audience and the mainstream media  pays attention.

Soon this interest gets out of control until things reach the second phase, which Gartner calls “the peak of inflated expectations”. The mainstream media is obsessed – expect to see  enthusiastic TV segments about the technology. You know things have peaked for sure when current affairs TV shows and radio presenters pay attention.

At this point people typically start to have unrealistic expectations. While there are successful applications of the technology, there are many more failures behind the scenes.

Once these disappointments become public, the hype cycle shifts into what Gartner poetically calls the “trough of disillusionment”.

Most of the mainstream press will turn its back on the story, others will be critical. Sales may drop. The idea quickly falls out of favour becoming unfashionable.

Some ideas and technologies sink beneath the waves at this point. Many re-emerge in 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.

As a rule, the media has lost interest and may even ignore things, the good stuff just happens quietly in the background.

Finally, the cycle reaches the stable “plateau of productivity”. Here the benefits of the idea or technology are now widely understood and accepted.