Rachel described her experience at a recent conference in which speakers (including Gartner) explained that the consumer debacle significantly hurt the industry. What I want to talk about today is our friend Rachel Park’s words on this report she recently posted on Disruptive. It will take many changes before it emerges from that position, I am afraid, but that’s an issue for another post. On Gartner’s chart, it is still headed into the deepest portion of the “trough”. The item I’m most fascinated with is “Consumer 3D Printing”, which was hyped to the extreme in 2013-2015, whereupon it crashed violently. What Gartner has done, however, is chopped up “3D printing” into a number of specific applications and planted them on the chart in positions where they feel they’re currently rated. It turns out almost every technology goes through this phase. One of the key concepts in the hype cycle is a period they call the “trough of disillusionment”, where a previously super-hyped technology has the market turn on it, as their outrageous expectations were not met. They’ve published these reports annual for many years now. The Hype Cycle is a concept invented at Gartner that illustrates how a technology proceeds through a series of very distinct “expectation levels” as it matures. Gartner has once again re-issued their 3D Printing Hype Cycle and it’s fascinating to see how things have progressed. Gartner’s 2017 Hype Cycle Chart for 3D Printing Technologies

Gartner hype cycle 3d printing