At least, not in the way you and I often draw it, according to Gartner.
The S-Curve model is broken. But what does that mean?
Gartner, the world’s best reference for strategy and market research to IT solutions, has two famous tools: the Magic Quadrant and the Hype Cycle. The lesser known of the two, the Hype Cycle describes, as the name suggests, when something gets into a hype, the subsequent disillusionment, and the afterlife post wake-up call.
Gartner’s famous Hype Cycle
I have known the Hype Cycle for a while now. But I have never seen it applied in a way that makes this clear sense to me, until Gartner’s Southeast Asia Partner (I haven’t asked for permission to use his name – let’s call him John) came in to my office last week to discuss his firm’s take on blockchain. All you need to know about blockchain is it’s in a hype right now. For those of you who are not in tech, if you hear the word ‘blockchain’ more than a couple times in the past week, that’s the sign. Almost no need for Gartner’s famous graph.
Back in May, when I attended a big IBM event in Singapore. Every corner of the hall was draped in A.I. and Blockchain. I remember reflecting sadly that, just a couple years earlier, such events had been all Big Data, and I had been having to defend my existence in a Small Data career. Boy how things have changed.
What John put in perspective for me is that the Hype Cycle is actually part of the larger, presumed S-curve of technology adoption. The actual S shape never happens, because without a hype, new technology won’t gather critical mass and climb past the inflection point. I’d never thought of that.
The Hype Cycle is actually part of the larger, presumed S-curve.
Now, with this picture in mind, another concept comes into clearer focus. Bill Gates said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” If we listen to Bill Gates – and why wouldn’t we? He is nerd smart, and sat atop the tech world for over two decades (& likely still does), seeing technologies come and go with much understanding than you & me. If we take his words for it, then a time scale emerge where we can make sense of the Hype-S.
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
– Bill Gates
Short-term tech “hype” could lead to long-term adoption.
If a piece of technology receives no hype right now, don’t bother with it. Remember, no chance of gaining wide adoption without a hype. Once it receives a hype, it’s safe to sit back and wait for a couple years at least. When the hype dials down, we can then evaluate which implementer / implementation / use case of the technology delivers promising value.
Part of being productive is knowing where to direct your attention and limited resources and energy. I hope this tool can help you be more productive in this noisy world of new technologies.
This blog is written with three specific areas of focus in mind: productivity, creativity, and expression.
First off, a background story. In preparing to write this blog, I took a quick survey of the 50 most popular blogs from Thailand. Here’s what I found:
1. 20.5 of them are in English, the rest in Thai. The 0.5 comes from when a blog is written in both languages, I count them half English, half Thai.
2. The English blogs are almost all about food and travel, which is understandable given that’s what Thailand is famous for.
So at the risk of being under-discovered, I decided to write this blog in English, even though they aren’t about food or travel (one of which, by the way, I’m nuts about). That is because I believe that interest in the three topics I’m going to cover transpires across cultures and regions. Everybody wants to do more with less. (I have yet to come across anyone who says “Geez, I wish I work harder and get less done!”) Most of us aspire to be creative; at least, we often feel inspired in the presence of creative work. And we all struggle to communicate, to express what we mean, how we think, who we are and what we feel.
If my readers can get a little bit better in any of these areas, I consider my work here worthwhile.
From time to time, the discussion may seem to veer off path a little bit. But I assure you it will still belong to the theme, just in a broader perspective. For example, productivity isn’t confined in a personal space – many management tasks in a corporate setting involve making teamwork more productive. So Peter Drucker’s type preaches are fair game here too.
Similarly, examples of creativity at times may seem techy rather than artsy (which is what many of us think when we hear the word “creative”), but they no less belong in the realm. When Steve Jobs demanded that rectangular windows in the early-day Macintosh have round edges, it was impossibly problematic, because the task involves taking a square root, which the Macintosh back in those days didn’t support. (It performed poorly even at multiplication and division, let alone taking a square root.) Apple’s engineers eventually divined a superfast way of taking a square root of a number using only addition and subtraction, and RoundRects was born! That was creative and genius!
Expression has most to do with bringing what’s in your head out to the real world to create impact. It may do with uttered voice in public, but it may also do with lines on a piece of paper and computer graphics rendered 3D. It’s a broad theme in fact; anything to do with connecting what’s in your head with what other people can see, hear or read is fair game.
And finally, the three topics are all very much related. As Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators, said, “Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through the lips and fingertips.”
Recent Comments