Like wikis, the Gartner Hype Cycle is something that has been around for a decade that I hadn’t heard of until recently. Of course, maybe I’m not alone. The Wikipedia article history on the topic is only a year old with just 16 edits.
The company is almost thirty years old and serves some 10,000 organizations by providing “technology-related insight.” Based in Connecticut, Gartner employs some 1200 researchers (and many more associates) to support its four divisions: Research, Executive, Consulting and Events. Hype Cycles began being utilized in 1995 as a way to visualize the path of enthusiasm and disappointment that usually happens when new technologies are introduced. They also show the path to wide acceptance.
On November 9, 1999, Alexander Drobik used the Hype Cylce in a report, “The End of E-Business,” that predicted the burst of the dot-com bubble. “E-business is set to fall into a period of disillusionment by 2001, before successful organizations move through the ‘hype cycle’ and emerge fully transformed so that they can be referred to as just plain ‘businesses’ again.”
(Graphic pulled from FLOOR)
Each cycle includes the five phases with some new-agey kinds of names:
- Technology Trigger — A product or technology is first launched, generating press and user interest.
- Peak of Inflated Expectations — Public frenzy views the tech as a cure for all ills, leading to unattainable expectations and more failures than successes.
- Trough of Disillusionment — Upon failing to meet those expectations, the tech becomes “unfashionable” among users and largely ignored by media.
- Slope of Enlightenment — A few companies or user communities persevere with the tech, experimenting to find a practical application.
- Plateau of Productivity — Widely-demonstrated benefits of an application lead to stable support and use of the tech, gaining visibility only through broad acceptance (as opposed to a niche market).
The most recent report for 2006 includes first-time mentions of Web 2.0, folksonomies, social network analysis, Ajax and Wiki. It is difficult to tell from the fuzzy image Gartner published, but it looks like Web 2.0, folksonomies and social network analysis are at the peak; Wikis and Ajax are in the trough.
