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The Gartner hype cycle is a graphical presentation developed, used and branded by the American research, advisory and information technology firm Gartner to represent the maturity, adoption, and social application of specific technologies. The hype cycle claims to provide a graphical and conceptual presentation of the maturity of emerging technologies through five phases.[1]
Each hype cycle drills down into the five key phases of a technology's life cycle.
The term "hype cycle" and each of the associated phases are now used more broadly in the marketing of new technologies.
Hype (in the more general media sense of the term "hype"[3]) has played a large part in the adoption of new media. Analyses of the Internet in the 1990s featured large amounts of hype,[4][5][6] and that created "debunking" responses.[3] A longer-term historical perspective on such cycles can be found in the research of the economist Carlota Perez.[7] Desmond Roger Laurence, in the field of clinical pharmacology, described a similar process in drug development in the seventies.[citation needed]
There have been numerous criticisms[8][9][10][11] of the hype cycle, prominent among which are that it is not a cycle, that the outcome does not depend on the nature of the technology itself, that it is not scientific in nature, and that it does not reflect changes over time in the speed at which technology develops. Another is that it is limited in its application, as it prioritizes economic considerations in decision-making processes. It seems to assume that a business' performance is tied to the hype cycle, whereas this may actually have more to do with the way a company devises its branding strategy.[citation needed] A related criticism is that the "cycle" has no real benefits to the development or marketing of new technologies and merely comments on pre-existing trends. Specific disadvantages when compared to, for example, technology readiness level are:
An analysis of Gartner Hype Cycles since 2000[11] shows that few technologies actually travel through an identifiable hype cycle, and that in practice most of the important technologies adopted since 2000 were not identified early in their adoption cycles.
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