Working the hype cycle, part 2

In my previous post today, "Working the hype cycle, part 1," I mentioned how I was wondering where on the Gartner hype cycle one would plot the entrance of the big consulting firms into a thought-leadership space.  After discussing it further in-house, I found myself thinking not of the hype cycle so much as the classic s-curve of issues development.

Trained, professional futurists, in addition to a great many other professionals, often use s-curves as our own thumbnail sketches as that sigmoid function is found so often in the maturation of public policy issues, development of technology, diffusion of tech, etc...  And so I began to think in terms of the s-curve, and more specifically, I began thinking about where you would expect to find different consultants entering a thought leadership/idea space.

Figure 1 is the result of my most recent thinking.

Figure 1: applying the s-curve to mapping thought leadership

Something like 2/3 the way through the curve you can see (what we're surmising as) the typical entry point for major consulting firms.  The reasons are neither terribly mysterious nor necessarily nefarious.  It generally isn't until about that point in the development of an issue that there is sufficient "trend" data or enough cases to study to begin to propose any sort of "best practice" action in response to an issue confronting a large organization.

Firms run by trained futurists, such as ours, are oriented below that point, spanning the entire first 2/3 of the curve, but often most useful in the Foresight Zone just before the "Application Gap."  And the application gap refers to the period of time in the development of an issue in which there is very little in the way of sound new wisdom to apply; no best practices to implement, no well-studied improvement projects to launch.  Just people more comfortable with risk and ambiguity deciding to wade in/strike early.

Put simply, our job is to help frame the full set of issues that will be cascading over you in the years ahead.  How can you make a truly informed decision regarding the "big" issues of the next 2-3 years without understanding the the waves of issues following right behind them?