INMA_A01.QXD

It may also be useful to identify how rapidly a new concept is being adopted. When a

product or service is adopted rapidly this is known as rapid diffusion. The access to the

Internet is an example of this. In developed countries the use of the Internet has become

widespread more rapidly than the use of TV, for example. It seems that interactive digital

TV and Internet-enabled mobile phones are relatively slow-diffusion products! Activity 3.1,

later in this chapter, considers this issue further.

So, what action should e-commerce managers take when confronted by new tech-

niques and technologies? There is no straightforward rule of thumb, other than that a

balanced approach must be taken. It would be easy to dismiss many new techniques as

fads, or classify them as ‘not relevant to my market’. However, competitors are likely to

be reviewing new techniques and incorporating some, so a careful review of new tech-

niques is required. This indicates that benchmarking of ‘best of breed’ sites within sector

and in different sectors is essential as part of environmental scanning. However, by wait-

ing for others to innovate and review the results on their web site, a company has

probably already lost 6 to 12 months. Figure 3.6 summarises the choices. The stepped

curve I shows the variations in technology through time. Some changes may be small

TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS

Figure 3.5Example of a Gartner hype cycle
Source: Gartner (2005) Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2005

Maturity

Technology

trigger

Peak of

inflated

expectations

Trough of

disillusionment Slope of enlightenment

Plateau of

productivity

Linux on Desktop for Mainstream Business Users

Micro Fuel Cells

Desktop Search

BPM Suites

Biometric Identity Documents

P2P Vol P

Inkjet Manufacturing

Electronic Ink/Digital Paper

Model-Driven Approaches

Carbon Nanotubes

Podcasting

Business Process

Networks

Augumented Reality

Text Mining

Corporate

Semantic Web

4G

Grid Computing

Wikis

SOA

Speech Recognition for

Telephony and Call Centre

Web-Services-

Enabled Business

Models

Really Simple Syndication

Biometric User Identification

Corporate Blogging

Prediction Markets

Network Collective Intelligence

Quantum Computing

DNA Logic

802.16 2004 WiMAX

Organic Light-Emitting Devices

Mesh Networks – Sensor

Location-Aware Applications

Business Rule

Engines

VoIP

Text-to-

Speech/

Speech

Synthesis

Internal

Web

Services

Software as Service/ASP

Handwriting Recognition

Videoconferencing

RFID (Passive)

XBRL

Tablet PC

Internet Micropayments

Trusted

Computing Group

less than 2 years

Plateau will be reached in:

Acronym key:

4G Fourth generation

ASP Application service provider

BPM Business process management

P2P Peer to peer

RFID Radio frequency identification

SOA Service-oriented architecture

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

XBRL Extensible Business Reporting Language

2 to 5 years 5 to 10 years more than 10 years

As of August 2005

Visibility