The Hype Cycle of Innovation: Key Questions
In the past I’ve referred multiple times to the Hype Cycle by Gartner.
Whilst having a look at one of Gartner’s presentation, I came across this slide, which indeed poses two key questions when examining a Hype Cycle.
Basically it’s a different point of perspective and goal as when one examines the ‘standard’ graph as seen below.
Instead of exploring the different emerging technologies and in which phases they’re located in, you can question yourself why certain technologies are not used and what are the reasons for that.
For technologies that are located in the Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations and the Trough of Disillusionment Slope, the key question is “What’s here that we could be using?”
Not all technologies are relevant for a business, but be open for a wide range of technologies and understand how or how it can’t impact your business, your product/service and your target group(s).
During the Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity, technologies show their benefits and become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technologies stabilize and evolve into second+ generations. The hight of the Plateau depends on the scope of application, meaning it’s only applicable in a niche market or that it can be applied massively throughout many markets.
For the key questions “What’s here that we’re not using?” and “Was that a deliberate decision?” it’s important to understand if they’re tested or not, and find out how the decision-making for that particular technology happened.
If there are relevant technologies in these phases and during the past strategic decision-making something went wrong it can harm the portfolio and growth strategies of a business on the long term.
What key questions can you ask yourself when looking at the Hype Cycle?
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There are two sets of questions I ask in regards to the hype cycle: consumability and substitution.
Consumability: Often, new technologies are pitched as a revolution. That’s great except that the 10X gain from the new technology often comes at a high cost to the adopting organization. When time to adopt is figured in, many organizations will say something like “Moore’s Law will get me there with standard processors just a little later, but without any investment by me.” Then you are dead. To get around this, you need to look at ease of adoption… not just the revolutionary performance gain, but also the cost (in time and money and risk) for the adopters to adopt. Many innovators forget this and make few, if any, investments to reduce that cost… to make their revolution bite-sized (i.e., consumable). Without that, there are no early adopters… and without them there is no revenue to get through the trough of disillusionment (or to cross the chasm). So, ask, “What’s the smallest/cheapest way that someone can try out the revolution?”
Substitutes: The enemy of all deals is time. If you have a revolutionary technology, but it’s going to take a massive rework of your customer’s systems, processes, training, etc., you are at serious risk that someone comes up with something better. You can be in the trough of disillusionment just as someone else is peaking expectations, and taking away your early adopters. Or, worse, standard processes could be improved to take you advantage away.
So ask yourself if the new technology is consumable and if substitutes will come on before you exit the trough.
Thanks Dan for the interesting comments.
With regard to Consumability, you see this also within Augmented Reality, often need to install a program and so on before one can experience the technology.
At the other hand, it’s this small piece (which you refer to as well) that enables people to sneek peak into the technology and for the developers/innovators to understand how target audiences are perceiving it. Now there are AR technologies which don’t neccesarely need an installation etc.
Do you think it’s a chicken-egg situation or is this a common situation?
Consumability is a measure of how easy and inexpensive it is to try a technology… and to de-install it if not satisfied. Installing an AR app is, indeed, inexpensive and (generally) without ripples into other apps or aspects of the system. However, you still have to configure what data sets are necessary and sufficient. So, as product manager, you need to decide what the default layers in Layar are out of the box. Slightly less consumable, for instance, is a navigation app: it requires you to change the GPS setting on your phone from the “E911 only” default that’s common. Etc.
But business applications almost always have a larger impact, even for a trial. Suppose a doctor wants to use an iPhone in the hospital. Have the apps been certified by appropriate regulatory bodies? Does the iPhone have sufficient security to be handling medical records? How is that security tied into the hospital’s IT security? Who bears the liability if a medical error happens while this is being tried out? Even just a trial for even just one doctor requires a lot of effort. That’s not consumable.
Another example: suppose you want to put out a new microprocessor. At small scale and/or for Office-like applications, the performance of your product is not better, so you think you should introduce only large-scale (i.e., expensive) systems. Those are not consumable, nor are they supposed to be. Therefore, to win in the market, you need to put out a small-scale system for people to play with… like a PCIe card with appropriate libraries. Is that small-scale product a winner? No. Is it a necessary condition to win? Yes, because it’s consumable.