Peak of inflated expectations
Trough of disllusionment
Slope of Enlightenment
No, you're not reading a Vipassana manual on meditation although the labels sound like the phases that a yogi goes through during a mindfulness retreat. It's a Gartner report on the "Hype Cycle for IT Outsourcing 2008" (July 1, 2008).
Such consultants and purveyors of business wisdom and bullshit like to use cryptic terms to show to clients that much thought and brain power has gone into the report. In my personal experience, when I break through the mumbo-jumbo, platitiudes and fakey charts, I find very few insights that can be used for business planning and outwitting the competitors.
The numbers and graphs are also suspect. Here's an example from the same report:
"a multiyear or annuity contract/ relationship... market penetration: 1% to 5% of target audience..." What the heck is market penetration of 1%-5% of target audience? And where do they get the numbers? And why can't they use a less weird term, instead of "multiyear". And "annuity" is rubbish here, it should be "annual" or single-year".
The solution -- for small and midsized businesses -- is not to waste good money on consultants but to read up on news reports and stories written by trained journalists, especially those from Business Week, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, and the better class of newspapers in the US and England.
My preference is for Businessweek which uses language that is clear, lively and direct, without any consultant-speak.
In Singapore, people who need to keep abreast of technology-related industry buzz, success stories and the products and services offered by local ICT companies, go to the authoritative IDA Web site: http://www.infocommsingapore.sg/
1 comment:
If you want classic consultantspeak, just try out the vision statement generator from Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon. This computer program generates random phrases that strung together sound frighteningly like some of the vision statements of leading companies.
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