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    The most recent Hype Cycle identifies three tech megatrends gaining ground in late 2017 and notes where they sit on the curve.


    Fast-moving technological innovation is deeply affecting the way organisations deal with workers, customers and stakeholders. With so many new things, how to tell the noise from the real drivers of commercial opportunity or risk? The Gartner Hype Cycle, first published in 1995, drills down into five phases of a technology’s life cycle over time. It covers expectations and impact from emergence (a potential breakthrough attracting media interest), which leads to excessive enthusiasm, then to failure and disappointment. Next comes growing momentum as enterprise benefits start to crystallise and finally, broad productivity benefits and mainstream adoption.

    Three tech megatrends identified

    The most recent Hype Cycle identifies three tech megatrends gaining ground in late 2017 and notes where they sit on the curve.

    1. Artificial intelligence: This includes autonomous vehicles, commercial drones, machine learning, cognitive computing, smart dust and enterprise taxonomy.

    2. Transparently immersive experiences: Remember Pokémon Go? Augmented reality has caught people’s attention, but enterprises are still struggling with useful applications despite the rise of virtual reality. There’s also 4D printing, brain-computer interface, human augmentation, the connected home and nanotube electronics.

    3. Digital platforms: Examples include blockchain, the internet of things, neuromorphic computing and chips, quantum computing and 5G internet services that promise to be 100 times faster than the current 4G network.

    The “cycle” has almost become an institution over two decades. It provides a helpful picture of emerging technologies in the context of your industry, for getting a sense of risk appetite and whether an organisation should make an early move, sit and wait or delve in for deeper investigation and cost-benefit analysis.

    But the prediction game is tricky. In a 2016 LinkedIn post (8 Lessons from 20 Years of Hype Cycles), Icon Ventures general partner Michael Mullany noted a few misses — we’re still struggling to attain competent digital assistants, for example.

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