Innovation doesn't happen in IT

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2013 is out

And besides the obvious features of human-machine interaction it reveals especially one thing that became obvious already in recent years: Innovation doesn’t happen in IT anymore. No surprises, actually. It wouldn’t be called “The 3rd Industrial Revolution” if it was only IT to realize it.

The good news for you IT folks out there: IT is the lever, driver and realizer OF the revolution; take a thorough look at the Hype Cycle 2013 and find the emerging trends that are NOT based on the big topics of recent years: Cloud, Social, Mobile and BigData (Analytics).

Gartner – in the featured topics as well as in the report around – focusses very much on how trends and technologies change the way humans act, interact and live.

Augmenting humans with technology
Machines replacing humans
Machines and humans working alongside together

None of these three claimed mature trends of the coming years features IT as such in the way we’ve dealt with it in the 4 revolutionary topics from above. However, in all of them you may find traces and basis of them.

What’s the major surprises in the Hype Cycle?

Cloud Computing has still not reached the bottom? I think, Cloud is far further on the axis than represented here …
CEP is still quite high on the graph: My expectation is far quicker adoption and maturation of the matter than represented here …
I assumed Biometric Authentication Methods in the “less than 2 years” area …
Respectively the same for Mobile Health Monitoring

What’s the no-brainers?

Human Augmentation: To broad-a headline to really be qualified – yes, of course, it will be a trend – whatelse.
Autonomous Vehicles shows a constant climb. Rightly so. And it still’ll take time …
3D Scanners as sort-of the “contra-answer” to 3D Printing
Big Data on the verve of maturation

What I really like on this year’s Hype Cycle is the fact that after we ITers have spent some years academically occupying ourselves with the major trends of the 3rd Industrial Revolution, after we’ve spent 100s of talks and presentations and 1000s of customer meetings, networking, webinars, blogs, … the whole story obviously bends back into the daily live reality of every human being. Every one of us – be it IT professional or else – will experience the change that the upcoming trends will bring into his life – probably unconcsiously …

I am looking forward to IT ceasing to be innovation and becoming the lever of innovation in all our daily life areas.

Eagerly awaiting your views on the Hype Cycle in the comments below.