There is a concept in the technology world that I find pretty interesting, and it is called the Technology Hype Cycle. It postulates that there are stages that technologies go through as to how they are adopted by humans. The speed that any single technology goes through the stages might vary a bit, but the stages are always there. Here is a description:

1. The Technology Trigger – The genesis of the technology, this where only extremely geeky people have any idea what it is.
2. The Peak of Inflated Expectations – This is where our “next big thing” is suggested as the cure to all ills and the next “disruptive technology.” I guess we could also call this the buzzword stage.
3. The Trough of Disillusionment – Our technology now almost disappears from the press. It will be written off by many non-tech people because they are not seeing it, or hearing about it as much at this point. It have now become not-cool. We will accuse it of just being a meme.
4. The Slope of Enlightenment – Far from dead, the technology is now being applied to real world situations and actually is starting to generate a return on investment. In other words, it is working.
5. The Plateau of Productivity – We have now completed the cycle and the technology is now a standard tool that we will soon take for granted. We will forget we ever lived without it and will ruminate on the old days before we had it.

It is easy to plot where we are with many of the technologies in front of us. For example, virtual worlds are clearly in the trough of disillusionment at the moment. However, I am seeing a number of companies developing virtual meeting rooms that look very practical for helping to support virtual teams across organizations. This is a typical variation of the something like Second Life that made a huge splash, and has not fallen down the slope to being viewed as not cool. Augmented reality is climbing quickly up the hype curve at the moment. Lots of people are predicting it will simply change the way we interact with data from now on (I am one of them by the way.) Location aware applications were something I talked about five years ago and painted lots of pictures as to what a device knowing where I was standing at a given moment could do for me. No we have hand-helds like the iPhone and Android and lots of location aware software and we are not really that impressed already.

I have been building technology companies long enough now to understand how important timing is to leveraging a specific technology. Whether building a company, or investing in applying some new idea, we all face the same dangers. Do it too early and you might waste all the investment, as the adoption rate you need from the herd will not be there. Do it too late and you will risk being just one of the herd and a “me too” player that must compete in a red ocean with all the other sharks. Having a good understanding of this technology cycle can really provide a strategic advantage to leaders.

So for some homework, go to a whiteboard and draw a typical bell curve that slopes back up slowly at the right hand side. Plot the stages I shared above and then see if you can identify three to five technologies in each stage and where they might fall graphically along the curves. The insight gained may vary well help you develop an eye for timing technology implementation in winning ways.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com