The Gartner Group’s Hype Cycle research provides the raw material for some of my favorite posts every year.
It is a graphical and conceptual presentation used to represent the maturity, adoption, and social application of popular technologies.
Here is a link to a Gartner research note on understanding Hype Cycles.
I’ve found that they are an excellent source of well-researched tech and business analysis. As another example, here is a video of their Top Ten Tech Trends for 2024.
via YouTube
Humans are famously bad at predicting the future of technologies. We tend to overestimate technology’s abilities in the near term and massively underestimate what it can do in the long term.
The shape of that curve has come to be known as the Gartner Hype Cycle, and the five stages of that curve are important for any entrepreneur or investor to understand.
via Gartner
In general, as technology advances, it is human nature to get excited about the possibilities and disappointed when those expectations aren’t met.
At its core, the Hype Cycle tells us where we are in the product’s timeline and how long it will likely take the technology to hit maturity. It attempts to tell us which technologies will survive the hype and have the potential to become a part of our daily lives.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle Report is a considered analysis of market excitement, maturity, and the benefit of various technologies. It aggregates data and distills more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct and contextually understandable snapshot of where various emerging technologies sit in their hype cycle.
Here are the five regions of Gartner’s Hype Cycle framework:
- Innovation Trigger (potential technology breakthrough kicks off),
- Peak of Inflated Expectations (Success stories through early publicity),
- Trough of Disillusionment (waning interest),
- Slope of Enlightenment (2nd & 3rd generation products appear), and
- Plateau of Productivity (Mainstream adoption starts).
Understanding this hype cycle framework enables you to ask important questions like “How will these technologies impact my business?” and “Which technologies can I trust to stay relevant in 5 years?”
If you are curious, here is Perplexity’s explanation of Gartner’s Hype Cycle and related research.
Another methodology uses frequency analysis to identify the “most hyped” concepts and technologies.
VisualCapitalist recently put together an infographic highlighting the most hyped technologies of each year. They call it the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”.
(Click To See Full Infographic) via VisualCapitalist
Here’s a Summary of the most hyped technologies, by year, since 2000.
- 2000 - Wireless Web, ASPs, Bluetooth
- 2001 - Web Services, Enterprise IM, m-Commerce
- 2002 - Biometrics, Grid Computing
- 2003 - Process Portals
- 2004 - Micro Portals, Virtual Content Repositories
- 2005 - P2P VOIP, Biometric ID Documents, BPM Suites
- 2006 - Mashup, Web 2.0
- 2007 - Legal P2P, Digital Video Broadcasting
- 2008 - Green IT
- 2009 - Cloud Computing, e-Book Readers, Social Software Suites
- 2010 - 4G Standard, Activity Streams
- 2011 - Internet TV, NFC Payment, Augmented Reality
- 2012 - BYOD, 3D Printing, Complex Event Processing
- 2013 - Big Data, Gamification, Wearable User Interfaces
- 2014 - IoT, Natural-Language Question Answering, Cryptocurrencies
- 2015 - Speech-To-Speech Translation, Advanced Analytics, Autonomous Vehicles
- 2016 - Blockchain, Cognitive Expert Advisors, Machine Learning
- 2017 - Virtual Assistants, Connected Home, Deep Learning
- 2018 - Biochips, Digital Twin, Deep Neural Networks
- 2019* - 5G, AI PaaS, Graph Analytics
*Missing from the infographic, but updated by Gartner
As we take our smartphones for granted, it’s hard to imagine Bluetooth, wireless web, or e-book readers as emerging technologies at this point - but at one point in time, the lightbulb was an emerging technology.
It’s also interesting to look at which technologies peaked in a hype cycle ... and which now popular technologies no longer appear on this list. For example, despite Virtual Reality being around since the 80s, I still expected to see it on this list.
Cryptocurrencies, “smart homes”, and several older examples are in a recession - but that doesn’t mean they won’t have resurgences.
As a reminder, the hype cycle and the innovation adoption cycle are often on very different time scales. It’s very possible that technologies from the early 2000s may still have their heyday.
What are you surprised wasn’t on the list? And, what do you think is about to get added?
We live in interesting and exciting times!
An Antidote For Anxiety & Scary Times
People seem rattled right now, don’t they?
Wallets have been tight, and fears of a recession have run rampant.
Even though markets and the economy are not the same thing, many voters believe they are. Consequently, in an election year, I suspect the government will push every button and pull every lever to boost the market leading into November.
Speaking of the markets, they have been pretty volatile the last few weeks. They have posted some of their worst days since COVID-19 but some of the best, too.
We find ourselves in a particularly partisan election year, with lots of uncertainty about who is running, what they stand for, and whether they can make a difference – or even do the job.
The situation feels worse because scary geopolitical events (that threaten World War 3) punctuate seemingly endless negative news cycles.
Now, on to the real point ... those things don’t matter and shouldn’t steal your focus. Why? Because that’s the playing field we all have to navigate.
There will be winners and losers. The key distinction lies in whether you choose to focus on opportunities or risk.
So, I thought this would be an excellent time to revisit how to cope with losses and manage your anxieties in “scary times.”
The Anxiety Antidote
During scary times, many people suffer from “I should have ...”, or “if I would have ...”, or “if I could have ...” thoughts.
The problem is that thoughts like those create more stress and distraction.
I’m reminded of a quote.
Negative focus highlights loss, difficulties, past events, missing things, and what you don’t want.
Think of them as an unhealthy reflex that wastes energy, confidence, and time.
All We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself
I often talk about market psychology and human nature. The reason is that markets reflect the collective fear and greed of their participants... people tend to get paralyzed during scary times like these.
But it’s not the economy that makes people feel paralyzed. People feel paralyzed because of their reactions and their beliefs about the economy. Your perception becomes your reality.
A little examination reveals that most fear is based on a “general” trigger rather than a “specific” trigger. In other words, people are afraid of all the things that could happen and are paralyzed by the sheer scope of possibilities. These things don’t even have to be probabilities to scare them.
You gain a competitive advantage as soon as you recognize that it’s not logical. Why? Because as soon as you distinguish that fear as not necessarily true, you can refocus your insights and energy on moving forward. You can act instead of react. You make better decisions when you come from a place of calm instead of fear... so create that calm.
Even a tough environment like this presents you with opportunities if you watch for them ... or even better ... if you create them.
The Scary Times Success Manual
The goal is to move forward and feel better.
Strategic Coach offers ten strategies for transforming negativity and unpredictability into opportunities for growth, progress, and achievement. They call it the “Scary Times Success Manual,” and what follows are some excerpts:
Forget about your difficulties, focus on your progress.
Because of some changes, things may not be as easy as they once were. New difficulties can either defeat you or reveal new strengths. Your body’s muscles always get stronger from working against resistance. The same is true for the “muscles” in your mind, spirit, and character. Treat this period of challenge as a time when you can make your greatest progress as a human being.
Forget about events, focus on your responses.
When things are going well, many people think they are in control of events. That’s why they feel so defeated and depressed when things turn bad. They think they’ve lost some fundamental ability. The most consistently successful people in the world know they can’t control events - but continually work toward greater control over their creative responses to events. Any period when things are uncertain is an excellent time to focus all of your attention and energy on being creatively responsive to all the unpredictable events that lie ahead.
Forget about what’s missing, focus on what’s available.
When things change for the worse, many desirable resources are inevitably missing - including information, knowledge, tools, systems, personnel, and capabilities. These deficiencies can paralyze many people, who believe they can’t make decisions and take action. A strategic response is to take advantage of every resource that is immediately available to achieve as many small results and make as much daily progress as possible. Work with every resource and opportunity, and your confidence will continually grow.
Forget about your complaints, focus on your gratitude.
When times get tough, everyone must make a fundamental decision: complain or be grateful. In an environment where negative sentiment is rampant, the consequences of this decision are much greater. Complaining only attracts negative thoughts and people. Gratitude, on the other hand, creates the opportunity for the best thinking, actions, and results to emerge. Focus on everything you are grateful for, communicate this, and open yourself to the best possible consequences.
Final Thoughts
We can pontificate all day long on the short-term causes of the rises and falls of markets, but I don’t think it does much good. I let the algorithms worry about those. It’s the larger trends we have to be personally aware of.
I sound like a broken record, but volatility is the new normal.
Pair that with all the fear and uncertainty, and you’ve got a recipe for increased volatility and noise. That means that the dynamic range of a move will be wider and happen in a shorter period of time than ever before. You’ll hear me echo this thought over the next few years as the ranges continue to expand and compress. Cycles that used to play out over weeks now take days or hours. The game is still the same; it just takes a slightly different set of skills to recognize where the risks and opportunities are.
Today’s paradigm - both in life and trading - is about noise reduction. It’s about figuring out what moves the needle and focusing only on that.
The crucial distinction is between adding data and adding information. Adding more data does not equal adding more information. In fact, blindly adding data increases your chances of misinformation and spurious correlations.
My final comment is that there’s a difference between investing and trading, and while humans can invest, if you’re “personally” still trying to trade - you’re likely playing a losing game. If you don’t know what your edge is, you don’t have one.
If you’re investing, I’ll advise you to act like a robot. If you removed human fear and greed from your decision-making - what would you do?
Keep calm and carry on.
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