For decades, industry analysts, market researchers, academics, futurists, and various other thought leaders have struggled to predict the next big thing in IT. Often, the projections offered are close to or exactly on target. Sometimes, however, they are completely wrong (remember smart cities, business supercomputers, Iridium , and Theranos ?).
For the average IT manager or executive, keeping up with rapidly evolving technology trends can be a daunting task. “Technology is often influenced by a catalyst that turns it from a fad into a trend,” notes Mike Storiale, vice president of innovation development and university partnerships at financial services company Synchrony. “Fads can be easy to spot—there’s excitement around something new that has the potential to be disruptive,” he says. But fads tend to be short-lived and only become a genuine trend when they create a significant and lasting impact on the market. “It’s hard to predict when a catalyst will come,” Storiale says.
Any technology that promises significant benefits but doesn’t bitcoin data deliver a clear, measurable return on investment (ROI) over time should be approached with caution, says Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research. Conducting due diligence is essential. “For example, AI has value, but it’s hard to put a finger on it,” he notes. Much depends on how and where it will be used.
IT leaders should always keep value in mind when analyzing any innovation. “If a technology solution solves a problem with a positive ROI, it will be successful in the long run,” Campbell says. “If it’s the technology that’s looking for a problem to solve, it won’t be successful.” Campbell points to Google Glass as a classic example of a hyped technology that lacked a clear use case. “We said from day one that it would fail,” he notes.
RFID is another technology that has excited many IT leaders but failed to live up to its widely touted potential. RFID was supposed to revolutionize the world by embedding responsive radio tags into grocery store products, license plates, rare works of art—even personal documents like driver’s licenses and health insurance cards. Its potential was in use cases where the cost outweighed the value—even at just five cents per tag. While RFID has found some niche applications, shipping giants like FedEx, UPS, and Amazon still don’t use RFID tags, opting to stick with simple, cheap, and reliable barcodes and, more recently, QR code tags .