What is common or different between "Product Lifecycle", and "Technology Hype-Curve"?

 

To understand the basic jargons here are few references for you:
1. Product Lifecycle: http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/product/lifecycle/
2. Technology Hype-Curve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

 

A quick Narrative

When we look at the combined figure all new technology trigger leads to new product introduction in the market. The unabated hype results in inflated expectation this is usally marked by the growth  and maturity phases. The market soon comes to grips with the real potential of a technology offering in terms of the benefits/utility of it and troughs in disillusionment, this often is the stage of market decline. The final phase is a plateau of productivity reached by the new technology, this is where the product sales tanks… This is where the “Innovators dilemma” creeps in and also if there is no innovation dilemma there is the “long tails” for the product…Which way it heads to depends on what is the nature of innovation….

Now lets look at the commonality and difference between the curves….

 

First Lets tackle what is common:
1. They all have a "S-Curves" or seemingly a "Normal curve"
2. They all explain the phenomena of a seemingly predictable pattern for entities through their lifecycle
3. They all appear to be simplifying (maybe somtimes trivializing!) the challenges of Technology Forecasting. (Refer more on techniques one uses in Technology forecasting...)

Lets look at what is so different:
1. They use different jargons (depending on your subject of interest: Marketing, Change Mgmt, etc.) to explain the inflection points on the curves


I cant see any more differences though...Need your help! Any comments or perspectives you can share?


We can look at few ideas like Grid Computing, Cloud computing, SoA and so on on the curves to see how they pan-out... Quiet interesting to view these trends by positing them on the curves....I was quiet amused when I was reflecting on my journey through school where I was so obsessed with AI and NLP...Thanks to my internship in one of the premier R&D center and few Terminator type movies, I was able to see through the disillusionment :-)...

Its a worthy exercise after all!

For more reading on this topic visit : http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-futr.htm#adoption

Its time well-spent I would