How will emerging technologies affect your company?

Gartner has released this summer the latest iteration of its “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2007", the broadest aggregate of Gartner’s hype cycles - a graph which charts how technologies are built up and adopted. The idea is that technologies follow a basic path of adoption - going from a trigger point, through overblown hype and then enduring disillusionment, before finally becoming more mainstream and accepted. A hype cycle offers a snapshot of the relative maturity of technologies. It highlights overhyped areas against those that are high impact, estimates how long technologies and trends will take to reach maturity, and helps organisations decide when to adopt or evaluate emerging technologies.

The three key technology themes identified by Gartner this year are:

Web 2.0: The community, technology and business innovations of the web continue to evolve and specific approaches and technologies have progressed including wikis, mashups, enterprise RSS, social network analysis and collective intelligence. The product and platform underpinnings have been more tightly defined in the 2007 hype cycle, with entries for web platforms and Web 2.0 workplace technologies.

User Interfaces: A number of emerging user interface technologies are entering serious commercialisation, including electronic paper (for mobile devices and signage), gesture recognition (as incorporated in the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Surface) and virtual environments/virtual worlds (such as Second Life).

Mobile: Mobile and wireless technologies, devices, and services continue to be an active area for emerging technology groups.

As represented in the Priority Matrix below, 10 of the 36 emerging technologies Gartner considered this year are viewed as having transformational impact on business and should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners within the next 5 to 10 years.

Web 2.0 continues to be a major area of activity in the enterprise this year. We will see companies steadily gain more experience and success with Web 2.0”

While I was somehow surprised to see Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 workplace technologies that far down the disillusionment phase of the hype cycle (but this may be due to the typical 18-24 month lag between the U.S. and Europe), I fully agree with considering them, together with SOA and Web Platforms as having transformational impact within the next 2 to 5 years.

Here is the 2006 version of the hype cycle for emerging technologies for your reference.

Despite the changes in specific technologies over the years, the hype cycle’s underlying message remains the same: Don’t invest in a technology just because it is being hyped, and don’t ignore a technology just because it is not living up to early expectations. Be selectively aggressive. Identify which technologies could benefit your business, and evaluate them earlier in the Hype Cycle. For technologies that will have a lower impact on your business, let others learn the difficult lessons, and adopt the technologies when they are more mature.