Gartner® Hype Cycle for Hybrid Work, 2023

Gartner first Hype Cycle of Hybrid Work

“Global views on hybrid work best practices and supporting technology continue to evolve in 2023. Over the previous 12 months, the number of employees working in a hybrid way has increased, while the number of employees who work only at home or only in the office has decreased. Ongoing polarization of views on where work is best done and uncertain returns on investments in corporate space have forced hybrid work to descend into the Trough of Disillusionment,” says the first Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Hybrid Work 2023.

What will get hybrid work out of the Trough of Disillusionment?

As explained on this Gartner blog: “Many hybrid work practices were implemented in haste in 2020, and technology and management strategies from location-centric work do not work well in a hybrid world. Patchwork and piecemeal approaches are limiting the effectiveness of the leadership strategies and technology categories that will help make hybrid work successful. Empathy-based management, workplace experience apps, and the smart hybrid office are critical innovations to accelerate hybrid work out of the trough.”

How do Gartner Hype Cycles Work?

The Gartner Hype Cycle provides a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.

Each Hype Cycle drills down into the five key phases of a technology’s life cycle.

• Innovation Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.
• Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.
• Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.
• Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.
• Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

(Source: Gartner Hype Cycle for Hybrid Work)