Q 344. HYPE Cycle is used to better understand emerging technologies. What is HYPE cycle? Give examples of technologies that are at various levels of this cycle.

 

 

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Hype cycle:- Hype cycle is a graphical representation of the genuine success rate of any emerging technology.

 

As we know that there are umpteen new technologies been developed every year, it is extremely challenging for organizations to choose the right one and invest on them. Many companies will realize in 4 - 6 months that they have invested on incorrect technology. One of the main reason for this challenge is because of the artificial hype created about the emerging technology.

 

Gartner is an American establishment who has come up with a solution to over come the challenge of organizations falling in the trap of bold promises made by new technologies. Gartner's HYPE CYCLE provides a close to accurate graphical representation of the maturity and adoption of emerging technologies so that an organization can take accurate decisions on their technology investments.

 

Hype cycle will clearly explain the 5 stages of emerging technologies as follows

 

 

1. Innovation Trigger:- This stage the new technology will kicks off with many success stories along with failures, however Gartner's Hype cycle will highlight the both unlike in the other systems where only success stories are highlighted and failure are hidden.

 

2. Peak of Inflated expectations:- At this stage only some companies like early adopters will invest in the new technology and many don't. Companies who has right information about the success of the new technology will make the correct investment choice and will get the advantage out of it.

 

3. Though of Disillusionment:- This is the stage of disappointments as technology faces many challenges in providing results as per the clients expectations, this will lead an interest wane on the emerging technology. At this stage, technology firms who can work on their shortfalls and revamp the enhanced technology only will survive and other technologies will die at this stage.

 

4. Slope of enlightenment:- At this stage, survived technologies will come up with second and third generation products which will enhance the success of the technology and many clients will start accepting the same.

 

5. Plateau of productivity:- This will be the peak stage of the technology success at which market will accept the new technology to the fullest. At this stage noy just the main stream will use the technology, where as many other supporting and relevant streams will start adopting the concept.

 

Advantages of HYPE CYCLE:-

• Helps organizations to choose right investments on technologies

 

• Hype cycle will help clients with better understanding of the emerging technology by separating the hype from the real drivers of the technology's commercial promises.

 

• This will also help to compare clients understanding of emerging technology Vs IT experts.

 

 

Top technologies that are filtered by "HYPE CYCLE:-

 

In this year (2020) out of 1700  new emerging technologies, HYPE CYCLE has distilled very few effective technologies which will support mankind & businesses for the next 10 years and below are the top 5  of them.

 

1. Composite Architectures

2. Algorithmic Trust

3. Formative Artificial Intelligence

4. Beyond Silicon

5. Digital Me

 

 

 

 

 

Hype Cycle was conceptualized by Jackie Fenn in 1995, while working for Gartner as an Analyst and Gartner subsequently after years insisting and lobbying with the industry started with the annual Hype cycle visualization for new and emerging technologies and branded the tool as Hype Cycle. Hype Cycle is technology life cycle stages Graphical demonstration passing through Conception to Maturity to Widespread adoption.

There are pre dominantly 5 stages in a Hype cycle but then we can build sub stages as well within those broad stages of a technology lifecycle. Mostly used by marketing and technology business decision making, businesses can choose the level of risk and comfort for each stage in the Hype Cycle and at what stage of the life cycle the product or service is currently at.

 

 

The hype cycle classifies five overlapping technology lifecycle stages:

 

1.   Technology Trigger: This is the stage where an Idea for a product, service or new technology is envisaged, a prototype may exist but not in functioning state and no market data, study exists as such on these new technologies, products or services but the prospective enhancement / change / innovation that they may cause will impact the how the media and market reacts and this could be supported by the proof of concept demonstrations as well.

Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Unsupervised Learning in AI, Supervised learning where Manual Intervention is required and limited data sets can be tagged and mapped and need a lot of effort and time. Unsupervised Learning where the Model / algorithm doesn’t needs manual tagging or Intervention. The Model works independently and learns on its own to tag future data in shape of images and Videos. The technology is still being explored and is conceptualized to be deployed in working environment.

 

2.   Peak of Inflated Expectations: The Tech Life cycle stage in Hype Cycle where the functional prototype / technology is implemented by early adopters , creators , inventors , is called the Peak of Inflated Expectations .At this stage a lot of publicity on successful or unsuccessful implementations may be attached with the outcomes.

Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Launch and Stick landings (Vertical landings) for Space Shuttles like SpaceX Starship SN10 rocket. The technology intends to reuse the Payload carrier and the Fueling rocket, thus reducing the cost and timelines for subsequent travels into Space for Mankind and delivering payload. Both SpaceX, Blue origin, Virgin Galactic are some of the pioneering organizations leading the race to Mankind Space Tourism.

 

3.   Trough of Disillusionment: At this stage the shortcomings and not meeting the expected results leading to failures may lead to disappointment in the product/ technology and will see a fall through of some early adopters, inventors and investors. The other may still continue with further refining the functionality and the adaptability of the product / technology while addressing the existing problems successfully. Also new investments and market sentiment will also depend upon the future state of the technology.

Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage:  Google was very enthused in its launch of the giant Balloon internet services, “Loon”. The experiment was to delivery low cost wide high speed internet services in tough terrain areas across the world. The Project is being scrapped as it could meet the desired objectives of cost optimization for a long term sustainable business.

 

4.   Slope of Enlightenment: The stage of the Hype cycle where product / technology Beta and early versions start showing potential expected outcomes and are accepted by the industry and gets adopted by the companies, peers OR gets tested in control environment .At this stage the inventors, producers will start working on the next gen version of the products / technologies, where it can be integrated with existing services and platforms.

Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage:    Hydrophobic Farming is one such example, when using acres of lands producing food feed on pesticides , Organic or Inorganic will become unsustainable , Urban Farming , utilizing less space , more energy and resource efficient is the answer in Agritech industry . The industry is expected to grow from $9.7 Billion in 2019 to $17 Billion by 2025 with almost 14% CAGR.

 

5.   Plateau of Productivity: The Hype Cycle phase where the successful and effective implementation is adopted on a large scale across industry spectrum, its differentiation yet adaptability becomes widely implemented. Standards are build up around the frame work of the technology for a sustained, standard understanding of the market and market players around this practice / technology.

Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage:  Mobile Internet, the technology is past 4G and most of the Developed countries have started rolling out 5G interest services that aim to provide data transfer speed of 20 Gbps at peak and 100Mbps at average. This is almost 100 times faster than 4G, which is the predominant cellular phone broadband network speed.  

In this age of business disruptions and innovations, entrepreneurs and Investors alike, want to move away from the tested and tried and explore new ideas. Technology is the best catalyst for any such vision.

New technologies are being discovered almost every day across the world and the news and awareness of any related information also spreads globally very fast due to access to communication mediums over internet and telecommunication. Needless to say, any technology’s success is reckoned and appreciated only when the broad market applicability of the said technology is relevant to any business and is creating revenue and profits.

Having said that, determining which technology will be commercially viable and will justify the time and money invested, is most important. There are many technologies that become obsolete by the time it evolves from it’s innovation stage to a stage of effectiveness. Hence, investment is a risk and at times many an opportunity is either wasted or missed. To address this need, An analyst from Gartner,Jackie Fenn came up with the “Hype Cycle” concept in 1995

The Gartner Hype Cycle provides an annual graphical representation of the maturity and adoption of evolving technologies and applications. Hype Cycle is very important to the Investors and Entrepreuners as;

-      It estimates how potential the technologies and applications covered in the report are to solve real business problems and exploit new opportunities in many businesses.

-      It gives a view of how the application or technology will evolve over time , thus providing a comprehensive analysis and insight to manage its deployment within the context of the relevant business goals.

-      It Separates hype from real drivers of a technology’s commercial promise

-      It reduces the risk of the investments made in technology

-      It acts as a point of reference to compare their understanding of a technology’s business value with the objectivity of experienced and reputed IT Analyst – Gartner is the world’s leading research and advisory company

.Every Year Gartner analyses over 90 evolving technologies from across the world and drills them down to it’s 5 Phases of Lifecycle <Diagram 1- Hype Cycle 2020>

 

1)    Innovation Trigger – Early Proof of Concept (POC) and stories from media “trigger” substantial publicity , through and attached excitement and bold promises. More than often there is no usable product and there is no proof of commercial viability. The three futuristic status is that

-      Some of them may take some years to reach commercial viability and may fizzle out also

2)    Peak of Inflated Expectations-  Publicity creates expectations and many follow ups pour in on the technologies- a few success stories also goes around but most of them fail and are put below the carpet. Some companies take action , most do not.

3)    Trough of Disillusionment: As the experiments and implementations fail to deliver, the interest of the Investing & entrepreneur community diminishes. But some high risk taking investments continue in select technologies if there is some improvement and some adaptable product is enhanced to the satisfaction of early adopters. BUT most of the work stops for good.

4)    Slope Of Enlightenment: Few instances of benefits from the technology begin to develop and are accepted. Investors with moderate appetite for risk , put in funds for pilots, but conservative investors remain cautious.

5)    Plateau of Productivity: The broad Market applicability and relevance of the technology or application are paying off. The next steps for using the same is better defined.

Investors refer to the hype cycle graph to get educated about the potential of an emerging/ evolving technology within the context of their business and their own appetite for risk.

 

The Hype Cycle of 2020 <Diagram 1> indicates that the hype surrounding Conversational AI is very pragmatic. With the ongoing pandemic having stimulated & accelerated the importance and adoption of digital technologies, by all users of technology, be it business or consumer, It is but obvious that virtual agents are inevitable and is developing and maturing at an exponential rate- Good times for even the conservative investor!!!

Examples Of Technologies That Are At Various Levels Of This Cycle.<Diagram 2>

#	Stages Of The Hype Cycle	Technologies	Estimated time to Reach Plateau	Scope of Maturity/ Plateau
1	Innovation Trigger	Generative AI	2- 5 Years
		Composite AI
		Augmented Intelligence
		AI Governence
		AI Developer & Teaching Kits
		Decision Intelligence
		Small Data	5-10 Years
		AI market Places
		Responsible AI
		Neuromorphic Harware
		Artificial General Intelligence	More than 10 Years
		Things as customer
2	Peak of Inflated Expectations
		Data Labelling and annotation Services	2 -5 Years	Dwindling towards Trough of Disillutionment
		Deep Neural Network ASICS
		Intelligent Application
		Edge All
		AI Cloud Services
		Deep Learning
		Smart Robots	5- 10 Years
		Knowledge Graphs
		Digital Ethics
3	Troughs of Disillutionment
		Machinen Learning	2-5 Years
		FPGA Accelerations
		Chatbots
		Comoter Vision
		Natural Language Processing (NLP)	5- 10 Years
		Autonomous Vehicles	More than 10 Years
		Cognitive Computing		Obsolete Now
4	Slope of Enhancement
		Insight Engines	2- 5 Years
5	Plateau of Productivity	GPU Accelerators	Less than 2 Years
Diagram 2 - Stages of Technologies

 

 

Rajesh and Sundeep's answers have been selected as winners as both have provided multiple examples of various technologies that are at various stages of HYPE Cycle. Well done!