Gartner’s Hype Cycle in emerging technologies: 2009 vs 2012

, ,

Global analyst Gartner issues various annual hype cycles, including the famous one in Emerging Technologies. Whilst most reviews and blogs focus on the one ‘picture’ of this year’s hype cycle (sometimes without any reference to the year, eg Jeff Bullas’ weblog), I thought it’d be more interesting to draw a comparison between the 2009 hype cycle to the one that is valid up until June 2012. Here’s 5 items regarding both versions of Gartner’s Hype Cycle in emerging technologies that caught my eyes. 

1) What happened to social media technologies?
Several social media technologies have moved off the Gartner hype cycle, which equals they have reached widespread adoption within 30% or more of the potential audience. Surveys by Accenture and Webmarketing123 however indicate B2B marketers are very slow in adopting social media technologies. It makes one wonder what the Hype Cycle would look like in business to business (B2B).

2) Speed of adopting technology goes up
When comparing the 2009 to 2011 hype cycles, the amount of emerging technologies that get adopted within a 2 year-timespan has more than doubled from 2 to 5 technologies. No exponential trend reminiscent of Moore’s Law yet. This is however a sign of some acceleration in overall emerging technology adoption.

3) Keeping track of technology over the years 
The speed of adoption may have gone up somewhat. This to me does not explain why only some 9 emerging technologies[1] show up in both graphs. One of which interestingly has tracked back on the curve from 2009 to 2011, i.e. 3D bioprinting. All other emerging technologies shown in the current Gartner hype cycle valid up until July 2012 appear did not show up on Gartner’s radarscreen almost three years back. Either this would indicate they became obsolete before reaching their plateau. Or Gartner’s accuracy in predicting emerging technologies future life is simply deteriorating.

4) More emerging technologies 
The very amount of ‘dots’ i.e. emerging technologies tracked in Gartner’s hype cycle has steadily grown almost by a quarter (up from 34 to 42 in 2 years’ time).

5) One overall Gartner hype cycle does not suffice in the longtail era
The significant differences between B2C vs B2B uptake of emerging technologies and social media in particular in the past 3 or more years defeat the purpose of one overall Gartner hype cycle in emerging technologies. In this longtail age, when does Gartner start applying the hype cycle concept to a number of verticals or at least draw a comparison chart in B2B vs B2C?

1 3D printing, Human Augmentation, Quantum Computing, Augmented Reality, Internet TV, wireless power, cloud computing, idea management & speech recognition

2009 Hype Cycle emerging technologies

2011 Hype Cycle emerging technologies

/0 Comments/by

The elusive customer in B2B

, , ,

Definition
The definition of elusive [e·lu·sive] according to Dictionary.com is twofold: 1) hard to express or define and 2) skillfully evasive: ‘a fish too elusive to catch.’

Read more

/0 Comments/by

Content Management in B2B: bridging company & customers

, , ,

Especially in business-to-business content makes all the difference. I’m not asmuch referring to the glossy corporate brochure or the annual report. Coming from corporate communications. I do refer to content coming professionals, experts. People of flesh and blood. Who excel at and are willing to share their vision on eg managed services in IT (the system architect), the most recent developments in corporate law (the attorney) or this month’s best insights in the world of new media (the B2B marketing consultant).

Read more

/0 Comments/by

Vacancy: Chief Content Officer

,

Content is king. Right?

Word-of-mouth is widely recognized as way more reliable than paid advertising. According to Seth Godin the future of marketing is in the content you create and distribute. “Be prepared”.

In a flatter, increasingly horizontal world meaningful content and expertise prevail over paid media. Content ensures buzz, recommendation, word of mouth. And indirectly sparks leads as well as business.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer one needs to needs to hear something 3 to 5 times about a specific company to believe that the information is likely to be true? This implies your content ‘fishing net’ needs to be substantial.

Lots of content work to be done therefore. Especially in business to business companies see the opportunities in content marketing. But what resources do we free to do this? Or will we recruit another intern to fill the gap? And what content will both grab our audience’s attention and is then shared amongst friends or peers in this age of information overload? Proper content can come from any department. Even from where you’d least expect it. With the best returns when done in cooperation between various experts and managers. The CCO | Chief Content Officer vacancy: open to any colleague.

 

 

/0 Comments/by

ZMOT: why Zero Moment Of Truth applies to Business to Business too

, , ,

The Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT (“zee-mot”) refers to the online research a prospect undertakes when considering a new purchase. The ZMOT kicks in after one has seen an advertisement for a product a service, yet before the actual purchase is made.

Read more

/0 Comments/by