The Constant Battle Between Hype and Hope
The Constant Battle Between Hype and Hope
This Week in Enterprise Tech, Episode 13, was all about announcements from ServiceNow, Boomi, and Red Hat, and exposed the battle between hype and hope and how to understand it.
👋 Hi and welcome to The DX Report — the research hub of The DX Institute all about Digital Transformation, the Digital Experience, and the Digital Enterprise. I’m industry analyst, author, and speaker Charles Araujo, and I’m all about providing insights and analysis for enterprise IT leaders as you make the big bets about your organization’s future!
Recently, I've been harping — repeatedly — about not getting caught up in the hype and keeping it real and pragmatic.
But I don't want to ignore the fact that all this hype exists for a reason: we love it.
At its core, hype represents hope. Hope for a brighter future. Hope of the possibilities of what a new piece of technology can bring to the world.
And it's our human nature to get swept up in the awe inspiring, positive vibes that hope represents. Moreover, hope is essential to our ability to generate forward progress.
When I work with tech companies, one of the first things I tell them is that they need a compelling and inviting vision of the future. Essentially, I'm telling them that they need to be telling a story of hope. They need to be painting a picture of a brighter future and an essential purpose.
We all respond to this sort of story because our greatest motivator is always an aspirational vision. But that's also the opening that allows hype to latch on and not let go.
Balancing Hype vs. Hope
Selling an authentic vision of hope is easy when you've got the goods to back it. When what you're doing is truly aspirational and forward looking, you can share your vision plainly. No hype is necessary because you have all the natural excitement you need baked into the story.
But what if nothing is really happening? What if there is little that's really new?
You resort to hyperbole. You shout louder and hope that people take it as something new and exciting. Do it long enough and people may start to believe it.
I'll let you be the judge of who is landing on which side of this equation, but in this week's episode of This Week in Enterprise Tech, we covered announcements from ServiceNow, Boomi, and Red Hat. Boomi and Red Hat were very focused on the more practical elements of helping enterprises respond to the changes happening. ServiceNow left me feeling a bit underwhelmed.
But was it hype over hope? I'll let you decide.
What is clear from both the story about engineer burnout from responding to hype demands and Apple's unusual blunder with their iPad ad is that there is overwhelming pressure to create noise and at least appear relevant.
So, what do you do with all of this information?
If you're a CIO, develop an internal hype-o-meter and teach it as a skill to your senior leadership team. Being able to separate hype from an authentic vision of hope will be mission critical as you select your partners.
And if you're the leader of a tech company, put yourself in a position to be sharing that authentic vision. Start with making sure you've got the real deal from a product perspective, and then hone and refine your vision so the hope comes through without any hyperbole necessary.
We all want to be inspired. Inspire us. Happy listening.
🗓️ This Week in Enterprise Tech, Episode 13
Spring means trade show season in tech, and both Amalgam Insights’ Hyoun Park and the DX Institute’s Charles Araujo have been on the road in recent weeks. In Week 13 of This Week in Enterprise Tech, Hyoun and Charles break down the key announcements from ServiceNow Knowledge, Boomi World, and Red Hat Summit, along with taking a look at burnout caused by the rush to meet AI hype and Apple's iPad blunder.
Segment descriptions and links to all the articles we discuss are in the Show Notes, below.
Watch the full episode here:
Or listen to the episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/15064548
📔 Show Notes
ServiceNow Knowledge 2024
ServiceNow made a number of announcements at its Knowledge 2024 conference last week, including new generative AI capabilities in Now Assist and a partnership with Genesys. Charles and Hyoun dig into the ramifications.
https://www.servicenow.com/company/me...
Boomi World 2024
Boomi made some key acquisitions from APIIDA, and is moving beyond traditional integration to include AI API management and data management. What do Hyoun and Charles make of Boomi’s new strategic direction?
https://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...
Red Hat Summit 2024
Red Hat has expanded to Oracle Cloud, made improvements to Ansible, and partnered with Elastic to manage retrieval augmented generation. Hyoun and Charles consider Red Hat’s focus on practical AI.
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press...
Burnout: Squandering AI Engineer Talent
CNBC recently published an article on AI engineer burnout. Charles and Hyoun assess what’s really going on, how executives are focused on achieving feature parity with competitors instead of building AI solutions that support business goals, how this is causing a morale crisis among AI engineers, and how this is going to hamper companies’ AI innovation plans.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/03/ai-en...
Crushed: Apple Reinforces AI Apprehension
Finally, everyone is talking about Apple’s misfire on their new iPad ad - prevailingly perceived as celebrating the destruction of human creativity rather than enabling it in electronic form. What does this say about how enterprises need to handle AI?