In today’s digital economy, hype is no longer adrift and untamed – it is actively steered. Market actors increasingly seek to catch the rising tide of expectations at precisely the right moment, harnessing structured tools and expertise to avoid being swept away or left behind. We distinguish between ‘hype in the wild’ and ‘tamed hype’, a framing used throughout this book. We have argued that tamed hype now permeates the chaotic sea of unruly claims. This chapter analyses how hype’s new actors have created managed channels within the wild sea of hype, potentially reconfiguring how market actors navigate this phenomenon. One early attempt to structure the chaos of hype was the creation of the Hype Cycle Chart (HCC).

9.1 A Pivotal Moment in Hype’s Evolution

One key turning point in taming hype came in 1995, when Gartner analyst Jackie Fenn introduced the HCC. This trend-analysis tool would reshape how expectations around emerging technologies are visualised and managed. Before its introduction, there was no clear framework to make sense of hype’s trajectory; it was considered ‘random’, as ‘noise’ and ‘ever accelerating’ (Edgerton, Reference Edgerton1997), but not as cyclical and with predictable stages. Fenn, however, developed and offered a structured framework for understanding hype’s temporal progression.

Initially, the HCC functioned as a cautionary device, grounded in the principle of ‘caveat emptor’. As Fenn herself explained, ‘[w]hen it first came out, it was more of a statement, the recognition that this is a pattern that happens … an adopter beware type of message’ (Fenn, interview). Adopter organisations were warned not to ‘fall victim to the hype cycle’, as premature adoption of unproven technologies could result in catastrophic failure. Yet Fenn also warned against the dangers of excessive caution. ‘Serious threats to survival’, she stressed, ‘are probably cases when companies don’t move soon enough’ – leading to irrelevance or missed opportunity. In short, the HCC framed the strategic dilemma at the heart of hype: act too early and risk failure; wait too long and risk being left behind.

Over time, however, the HCC’s message evolved. While it first encouraged restraint, it later promoted the idea that hype could be embraced and strategically leveraged as a resource. Alongside other promissory products – categories, rankings, and Cool Vendor designations – the HCC began guiding organisations on how to time their investments and respond to emerging innovations. It thus shifted from warning against hype to embracing and capitalising on it, recognising innovation’s potential to transform industrial landscapes.

This reframing highlighted not only the ‘threats’ posed by disruptive innovations but also the ‘opportunities’ available to those who can time their moves effectively. Many still interpret the HCC as a warning against speculative bubbles – an instrument to tell managers to ‘get in while the hype is rising and get out before the disappointment sets in’ (Rip, Reference Rip, Fisher, Jones and von Schomberg2006, p. 353). However, this common interpretation neglects the more subtle strategic sensibility embedded in the HCC: it not only counsels caution in periods of accelerating hype but also reframes phases of waning enthusiasm – exemplified by the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ – as potentially advantageous moments for intervention rather than simply phases to be avoided.

But the shift was not merely rhetorical. The HCC began to inform concrete practices and decisions, equipping organisations with new ways to assess and act on emerging technologies. The HCC can be seen as operationalising Levitt’s (Reference Levitt1965) ‘used apple’ thesis. As discussed in Chapter 3, the dilemma of when to ‘bite’ – whether early, at the peak of freshness, or later with greater certainty but reduced reward – was previously more theoretical than actionable. By rendering the dilemma in a visual format, the tool allows actors to ‘see better’ the problem, and thus to deliberate and act more effectively (Quattrone, Reference Quattrone2015, Reference Quattrone2017). As Fenn explained in our interviews, ‘aggressive companies can investigate more technologies earlier as they are comfortable with more risk’, while ‘more conservative companies should only adopt early if the potential benefit justifies the additional risk’ (Fenn, interview).

What began as a cautionary visualisation evolved into a cornerstone of this analyst firm’s product suite, eagerly anticipated by clients each year. It functions as an organisational – and arguably industrial – change agent, prompting market actors to reconsider how they might respond to hype and position themselves in relation to emerging technologies.Footnote ¹ It contributes to a reconceptualisation of the technology adopter – from a passive and cautious actor (Karahanna et al., Reference Karahanna, Straub and Chervany1999) to what could be termed the ‘Schumpeterian adopter’ – a technology adopter behaving more like an investor: proactive, risk-taking, and opportunity-seeking. This reframing has two consequences.

First, it creates ‘animal spirits’ (Keynes, Reference Keynes1936) as a new object of managerial attention. Decision-makers are encouraged to consider their emotional responses – excitement, fear, uncertainty – and evaluate whether they are being ‘lured out of their comfort zones by market hype’ or prepared to move beyond them in pursuit of strategic advantage (Gartner Research, 2018). The HCC not only introduces self-awareness about hype-induced emotions, but it also attempts to tame the animal spirits by channelling them into a risk profile framework, prompting them to self-identify as Type A (aggressive), Type B (moderate), or Type C (conservative) in terms of their disposition towards hype. While such risk profiling is common in venture capital (Birch & Muniesa, Reference Birch and Muniesa2020), the HCC extends this mindset to technology adopters, now encouraged to ‘think like an investor’ (Chiapello, Reference Chiapello2023), representing a shift from the conventional view of technology adopters as inherently ‘cautious’, ‘risk-averse’ actors requiring ‘strong evidence’ before adoption (Karahanna et al., Reference Karahanna, Straub and Chervany1999).

Second, Fenn reframed hype as something that not only rises and crashes but also matures over time. Unlike economic cycles, which comprise a series of up-and-down movements, hype cycles include a resurrection (towards the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ and the ‘Plateau of Productivity’). Transforming hype from a random spike into a predictable cycle is significant. It offers a more positive rendering. The focus moves from viewing hype solely in terms of its ‘dangers’ to recognising its ‘opportunities’, which influences both our present approach to it and our future understanding of hype. Where hesitation once prevailed, there now exists the potential for proactive engagement. In this way, the HCC helped shift the organisational disposition towards hype, from inaction and caution to strategic experimentation and calculated risk-taking.

9.2 Taming Hype and the Structuring of Expectations

From the viewpoint of this book, the HCC illustrates the taming of hype in the digital economy, signalling a shift from unregulated narratives towards structured and institutionalised forms of expectation. In the conventional view, the digital economy is often portrayed as a turbulent sea of hype, where charismatic entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk unleash bold visions that ripple across markets (Goldfarb & Kirsch, Reference Goldfarb and Kirsch2019). These figures correspond to the ‘promise entrepreneur’ (Joly & Le Renard, Reference Joly and Le Renard2021) introduced in Chapter 2 – individuals renowned for crafting compelling, future-oriented narratives. Such unregulated, viral storylines – what we term ‘hype in the wild’ – have long dominated both scholarly and popular accounts of innovation.

This framing views hype as generic promissory narratives designed to capture attention and inspire interest. Such claims circulate through dispersed discourse coalitions (Hajer, Reference Hajer1995) – customers, investors, or the public – and are often described as self-fulfilling or performative (Goldfarb & Kirsch, Reference Goldfarb and Kirsch2019). Promise entrepreneurs typically evade accountability when their claims fail to materialise. According to this view, hype fosters radical uncertainty (Felt et al., Reference Felt, Wynne, Callon, Gonçalves, Jasanoff, Jepsen, Joly, Konopasek, May, Neubauer, Rip, Siune, Stirling and Tallacchini2007), undermines established evaluation frameworks (McBride et al., 2023), and renders expectations ungovernable (Grodal & Granqvist, Reference Grodal, Granqvist, Ashkanasy, Zerbe and Härtel2014). Market actors thus experience hype as ‘difficult, if not impossible, to control’ (Bakker & Budde, Reference Bakker and Budde2012, p. 560), often reduced to a passive ‘waiting game’ (Robinson et al., Reference Robinson, Le Masson and Weil2012). Proactive responses appear rash, driven by unchecked ‘animal spirits’ rather than strategic calculation.

However, this picture is changing – and the HCC provides one vivid but not the only example of this shift. We have shown that similar dynamics can be seen around Cool Vendor appellations, Magic Quadrant rankings, market categories, analyst briefings, etc. This points to how hype is no longer confined to untamed, spontaneous expressions; it increasingly circulates through structured, institutionalised processes of taming. Hype’s new actors have built managed channels that reshape how market participants engage with expectations. We present our argument about tamed hype in contrast to this dominant portrayal of hype in the wild, which, we argue, rests on an overly unitary conception of hype as a single, undifferentiated phenomenon (Goldfarb & Kirsch, Reference Goldfarb and Kirsch2019; Bourne, Reference Bourne2024). Despite its prominence, hype remains under-theorised, with little attention to its heterogeneity or modes of circulation. By foregrounding taming, we show how hype is actively structured, mediated, and made actionable.

Tamed hype arises from the work of hype’s new actors – in our case, industry analysts and analyst relations experts – who design, deploy, and respond to promissory products that evaluate and steer emergent narratives. Our analysis reveals a growing interplay between these actors and the broader circulation of hype, showing that hype is no longer merely driven by entrepreneurs or vendors but is increasingly co-produced within formal systems of evaluation.

This evolving dynamic transforms the character of hype itself. It is no longer just a matter of open-ended narratives: hype is now often crafted with an eye towards recognition and validation within evaluative frameworks. From this perspective, promissory work increasingly involves cultivating ‘evaluability’ – narratives designed to be legible, assessable, and endorsable by market gatekeepers. Much of today’s hype is strategically crafted to resonate with these evaluations. Hype is not simply speculative; it has become reflexive, shaped by the very mechanisms designed to judge it. Ventures are not only pitching a future but performing it in recognisable ways – learning how to look like a Cool Vendor, or how to frame themselves for the next Magic Quadrant. Innovators calibrate their claims to align with, and sometimes to influence, a market category or the journey of an innovation through the HCC. This marks a fundamental shift: hype is no longer just performative future-making but a strategic response to how future-making is itself structured and assessed.

The turn to taming can be traced to the aftermath of the dotcom bubble (Garud et al., Reference Garud, Lant and Schildt2021). In response, market gatekeepers developed mechanisms to stabilise and steer hype, making it more predictable and actionable. ‘After Hype’ thus does not mark hype’s disappearance, but its reconfiguration within structured, device-mediated systems of evaluation. It signals a shift from spontaneous speculation to a formalised landscape, where actors align promissory claims with evaluative infrastructures.

Taming makes hype tractable and actionable. Promissory products do not eliminate uncertainty; they create structured channels – both analytical and practical – within the chaotic sea of speculation. These channels subject bold claims to scrutiny and evaluation, offering navigability amid uncertainty. In practice, they take the form of concrete techniques – such as rankings, Cool Vendor designations, and analyst briefings – that serve as an infrastructure for filtering and interpreting hype.

Taming is not about dampening excitement but operationalising it – transforming hype from a volatile force into a strategic resource. These processes are central to how promises and expectations are now curated and controlled in the digital economy (see Table 9.1). This table synthesises the key differences between unregulated ‘hype in the wild’ and institutionalised ‘tamed hype’, using the four taming dimensions introduced earlier. As the table shows, tamed hype involves greater scrutiny, structure, and guidance, fundamentally altering how hype is produced and consumed.Footnote ²

Table 9.1Comparing hype in the wild with tamed hype

Table 9.1 Long description

The table has three columns titled Taming dimensions, Hype in the wild, and Tamed hype.

Row 1 column 1 reads. Reclaiming, hype, from the wild.

Row 1 column 2 reads. Promissory claims bold, unverified, and often unchallenged.

High reliance on charisma, storytelling, and visionary rhetoric.

Accountability limited due to evidentiary delay and shifting market attention.

Prone to bubbles, crashes, and reputational damage.

Row 1 column 3 reads. Narratives are interrogated by analysts, requiring ventures to moderate claims and provide justification for projections.

Gatekeepers constrain exaggeration, prompting recalibration and narrative repair during briefings.

Tighter scrutiny begins to emerge as ventures approach commercialisation and market traction.

Row 2 column 1 reads. Making, hype, tractable or navigable.

Row 2 column 2 reads. Claims open-ended, ambiguous, and difficult to situate within established categories.

Hype operating through affect and speculative momentum; evaluative criteria are unclear.

Lack of shared references or categorisation systems hampering decision-making.

Row 2 column 3 reads. Ventures are encouraged to reframe offerings within recognised analyst categories.

Analysts offer formalised evaluative tools to aid navigation.

Promissory products structure hype into legible forms, allowing for cross-venture comparisons and benchmarking.

Row 3 column 1 reads. Domesticating, the evaluator.

Row 3 column 2 reads. Evaluation informal, episodic, and largely outside vendor control.

Success or failure often judged retrospectively, long after initial claims were made.

Feedback driven by market forces, media cycles, or investor sentiment.

Evaluative criteria unclear or unstable; social proof substitutes for structured judgement.

Row 3 column 3 reads. A R professionals coach vendors on how to present promissory narratives that align with analysts’ frameworks and anticipate scrutiny.

Analysts’ frameworks become more formalised and transparent but also subject to strategic influence by vendors.

Vendors no longer passively receive evaluation; they actively participate in shaping it.

Row 4 column 1 reads. Cultivating and improving, hype.

Row 4 column 2 reads. Decision-makers overwhelmed or paralysed; hype seen as noise or distraction.

Stakeholders deferring action due to high uncertainty and lack of reliable evidence.

Hype seen as misleading and difficult to act upon; actionable insights limited.

Row 4 column 3 reads. Promissory products help decision-makers interpret claims, assess credibility, and time their investments.

Structured guidance enables decision-making despite inherent uncertainty.

Hype is increasingly treated as a legitimate, trackable signal; analysts advise clients on how and when to engage with emerging technology.

Our book has introduced the concept of tamed hype as a novel framework for understanding the institutionalisation of promissory narratives in the digital economy. We have traced the transformation of hype from being dismissed as ‘noise’ (Jordan, Reference Jordan2020) or condemned as ‘dangerous’ (Nightingale & Martin, Reference Nightingale and Martin2004) into a deliberately managed and institutionalised process. This mirrors what Latour (Reference Latour2004) described as a shift from a debated ‘matter of concern’ to an accepted ‘matter of fact’, and echoes Martin’s (Reference Martin2015) observation of a broader shift from a speculative ‘regime of hope’ to an evidence-based ‘regime of truth’. In short, we are witnessing the institutionalisation of hype as a structured and governable element of the digital economy. Recognising this emerging conception of tamed hype opens up new lines of enquiry. One such enquiry is how organisations might make decisions through hype rather than despite it, as we explore next.

9.3 Making Decisions through Hype, Not despite It

We examine how the emergence of tamed hype is reshaping adoption decisions in the digital economy. A crucial question follows: Are organisations now leveraging hype as part of decision-making, rather than working around or against it?

We have argued that hype is no longer a uniform force. It varies in form, structure, and degree of institutionalisation, and these variations are consequential. If distinct forms circulate – whether as tamed hype, hype in the wild, or other emerging configurations – then each shapes how technological futures are interpreted, evaluated, and acted upon. These differences influence what actors notice, how they interpret developments, and when and how they act. In other words, they affect how innovation is governed, which futures attract investment, and how opportunities and risks are understood.

A highly institutionalised hype may prompt adopters to act sooner on a technology than they would under hype in the wild. Rather than chasing every novelty or ignoring hype, adopters may now time moves strategically – for instance, targeting technologies just emerging from the HCC’s ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ to outpace competitors (see Chapter 6). Yet these dynamics remain under-theorised and empirically underexamined, highlighting the need for systematic comparative and longitudinal research.

There are growing signs that market actors no longer treat hype as something to be screened out or ignored. Instead, they appear increasingly inclined to make decisions through the lens of tamed hype. If so, hype ceases to be mere background noise and becomes a form of market intelligence to monitor, leverage, and act upon. This possibility invites further research into how organisations develop capabilities to interpret and use hype – and the organisational and market consequences that follow.

This challenges the dominant scholarly view that the distinction between hype and ‘fundamentals’ can only be made in hindsight, once outcomes have materialised (van Lente, Reference Van Lente2012; Master & Resnik, Reference Master and Resnik2013). We suggest that hype’s new actors are reshaping how decision-makers approach, evaluate, and act on technological futures in real time (or at least within organisational decision-making cycles). As recent work shows (Beckert, Reference Beckert2016, Reference Beckert2021; Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022), not all hype is equal: some expectations are more plausible than others or backed by more credible expertise, while others remain speculative. Building on this insight, we argue that market gatekeepers – such as industry analysts – while unable to verify promissory claims, can systematically evaluate them and offer informed judgements about which narratives are more likely to be realised.

This marks a subtle but important shift. Hype’s new actors do more than temper hype: they reshape how it is consumed and acted upon, steering attention away from overblown claims and towards more grounded opportunities. As a result, decisions may increasingly be made through, rather than despite, hype. In short, hype may be transforming from a distraction into a decision-making tool – though the extent of this shift remains to be demonstrated empirically.

Promissory products such as the HCC, Magic Quadrants, categories, and Cool Vendor reports do not merely track hype; they structure, filter, and operationalise it in ways that vary across domains and over time. Where decision-making once relied heavily on informal judgement and ‘gut feel’ (Karahanna et al., Reference Karahanna, Straub and Chervany1999), it is now often decomposed into modular, manageable steps – each supported by specific promissory products that enable continuous benchmarking, tracking, and recalibration. This ‘salami slicing’ of decision-making – breaking big, risky decisions into smaller, manageable ones – may not eliminate speculation, but it redistributes and repackages it.

Market gatekeepers have also created new organisational arenas – such as analyst briefings – where promissory claims can be tested, revised, and provisionally endorsed. Such spaces encourage decision-makers to act more reflexively and strategically in the face of uncertainty. As our analysis across the book suggests, taming has not only made hype more navigable – it is elevating it into a central object of managerial attention. In doing so, it is reshaping the very infrastructure through which emerging technologies are evaluated, legitimated, and acted upon. Mapping these infrastructures, their evaluative criteria, and their consequences for innovation outcomes is a central agenda for future research.

9.4 Wild Hype Not Diminished

Our account of taming is intended as a complement – not replacement – for the prevailing hype in the wild perspective, and we see scope for examining how these perspectives interact across different technological and organisational settings. Crucially, wild hype has not disappeared (at least in the digital economy). Tamed forms of hype now circulate within the promissory arena alongside more unregulated and charismatic narratives. The relationship between these two forms of hype – tamed and wild – remains a rich and underexplored terrain, ripe for comparative study. One might conjecture that taming could eventually shape, constrain, or even discipline wild hype. However, we have not yet found substantial empirical evidence of this dynamic, beyond suggestive anecdotes. In many respects, wild hype continues to thrive unchecked by the tools and actors associated with taming.

Nor does our focus on taming dismiss the concerns raised by hype in the wild scholarship. We do not, for instance, downplay the importance of studying sensational episodes, such as the Theranos scandal (Cheney-Lippold, 2024). These moments continue to play a significant role in shaping public discourse and institutional responses. Indeed, such scandals often catalyse the emergence or refinement of taming practices – triggering calls for greater oversight, regulation, and evaluative rigour (Zankl & Grimes, Reference Zankl and Grimes2024). The nature and extent of tamed hype’s influence on wild hype, therefore, remain open and important questions for future research, including whether scandal-induced reforms diffuse or stay local.

That said, while the prevalence of wild hype remains high, its overall effectiveness in the digital economy may be uneven (and possibly in decline). Where once it dominated unchallenged, wild hype now appears increasingly marginalised. For instance, the once-unquestioned authority of high-profile ‘promise entrepreneurs’ is now met with growing public criticism – the so-called ‘techlash’ (Weiss-Blatt, Reference Weiss-Blatt2021). This shift suggests a subtle (and still poorly mapped) reconfiguration of the promissory landscape. Alternative valuation frameworks and evidence-based tools may now be gaining ground, enabling market actors to bypass – or at least bracket – some of the more hyperbolic claims. We might be witnessing a new hierarchy of promissory narratives, in which wild hype is increasingly devalued and tamed hype carries greater weight. Future research should examine if and how such a hierarchy is taking shape.

At the same time, our model of taming prompts further reflection on its boundaries. What cannot be tamed? What resists structuring? We do not claim that the digital economy is moving towards better, more calculated decision-making. On the contrary, our research highlights the persistent volatility, ambiguity, and fragility of innovation evaluation – even when supported by increasingly sophisticated tools, suggesting that any attempt to tame it has its limits. It is crucial to clarify that taming does not imply more control. The mechanisms designed to manage hype – such as rankings, categories, and briefings – can themselves generate new speculative dynamics. Taming is not an endpoint but a recursive process that often creates new forms of second-order hype. As Stirling (Reference Stirling2020) reminds us, control is frequently an illusion; what appears to be management may, in fact, be amplification under different guises.

Thus, the idea of ‘purifying’ hype (Chapter 6) is both epistemologically flawed and practically implausible (Latour, Reference Latour2012a). Uncertainty remains irreducible: no evaluative framework, however robust, can fully predict which technologies will succeed, which vendors will deliver, or which futures will materialise. Promising innovations may stall; breakthroughs may render existing categories obsolete. Start-ups, in particular, often outpace the evaluative models used to assess them, revealing the limitations of existing evaluative infrastructures and exposing blind spots in established analyst processes – patterns that future work could document more systematically across innovation cycles.

These potential ‘breakdowns’ (Jackson, Reference Jackson, Wajcman and Dodd2017) underscore a crucial insight: the taming of hype is always partial and contingent. It is vulnerable to failure, overreach, and misalignment with fast-moving innovation landscapes. Future studies could examine the limits of taming more explicitly, asking: Under what conditions do evaluative frameworks break down? And what unintended consequences might arise when taming tools are over-applied or misapplied? Addressing these questions will help specify when taming moderates, magnifies, or merely redistributes hype, and with what implications for innovation outcomes.

9.5 Mechanisms of Taming Hype

The four taming dimensions in Table 9.1 offer a high-level account of how hype is progressively tamed. Another of the book’s contributions has been to demonstrate how these taming dimensions are materially enacted. We identified four core taming mechanisms: (i) briefings, (ii) calculative triaging, (iii) prerequisites for success, and (iv) trajectory of evidence.

9.6 The Managed Spiral of Promissory Products

Studying the digital economy for over two decades has provided a unique vantage point to observe how hype has evolved into a distinct domain of economic activity – a business in its own right. From selling hype evaluations to offering specialised advisory services to producing rankings and visual tools for navigating expectations, a commercial infrastructure has emerged around the production and governance of hype. This perspective reveals not only how this business has emerged but also how the various promissory products shift and adapt in response to new challenges, reflecting the changing dynamics of innovation and uncertainty in the digital economy.

A central question arises: How do promissory products evolve in tandem with innovation, ensuring that hype remains governable over time? The promissory products developed by analysts are not static instruments tied to a single technological moment. Instead, they have proven highly adaptable, evolving to remain relevant as new technologies emerge and older ones become obsolete. We argue that this adaptability reflects not just innovation in isolation but a managed spiral of promissory products, sustained through processes of entrainment whereby evaluative tools reinforce and extend one another across technological domains.

Here we build on the spiral metaphor introduced in Chapter 3. Whereas there we emphasised its role in explaining the proliferation of promissory products, here we develop it further to show how the spiral is actively managed – through adaptation and entrainment – to tame hype over time.

The taming of hype is best understood as a recursive spiral in which one evaluative tool opens space for the development of others (MacKenzie, Reference Mackenzie2000; Beunza, Reference Beunza2019). Each innovation in evaluation lays the groundwork for subsequent adaptations, creating a cumulatively emerging pattern of elaboration and refinement. Our analysis has identified three overlapping phases in this evolution, each marking a shift in how hype’s new actors manage hype and tailor their approaches to technological complexity and changing client needs (see Figure 9.1):

The evolving spiral of promissory products continues to adapt, signalling ongoing experimentation in the evaluative infrastructure of the digital economy. For example, this third phase remains in flux. It is unclear how stable or enduring these new evaluative forms surrounding start-ups will prove to be. What is clear is that we are still in the early stages of a broader transformation in how emerging ventures are identified, classified, and made investable.

Figure 9.1

Three phases of taming hype.

Figure 9.1 Long description

The diagram has an outward spiral with three rings representing the three phases of taming hype. Phase 1 at the center or origin of the spiral is labelled, Ranking Mature Technologies. Phase 2 is labelled, Triaging Emerging Technologies. Phase 3 is labelled, Valorising Disruptive Technologies.

We now consider one factor that underpins this spiral: the role of entrainment.

9.7 Hype Management

The concept of ‘hype management’ – recently articulated by Logue and Grimes (Reference Logue and Grimes2022) – describes how market actors seek to shape and sustain attention, legitimacy, and credibility in the face of uncertainty. It highlights the deliberate, often strategic efforts to navigate the volatile dynamics of expectations – turning what might be fleeting enthusiasm into more durable support. How, then, do our findings on taming hype speak to and revise this concept? We develop the notion in three ways. First, we build on but complicate Logue and Grimes’ (Reference Logue and Grimes2022) distinction between ‘material proof’ and ‘social proof’. Second, we demonstrate that evaluation unfolds longitudinally, not well captured by short-term snapshot studies. Third, we theorise ‘trajectories of evidence’ (Kruse, Reference Kruse2015) as a mechanism through which hype is tamed over time.

The etymology of ‘management’ – from the Italian maneggiare, meaning ‘to handle’ (Barnhart, Reference Barnhart1999) – underscores hype management’s affinity with our notion of taming: both evoke deliberate control and the careful steering of something potentially unruly. Applied to hype, the term suggests that expectations can be guided and stabilised through ongoing evaluation, as market actors decide what, and whom, to believe.

Logue and Grimes (Reference Logue and Grimes2022) implicitly develop this taming view in their study of the impact investment sector. They demonstrate how organisations strive to convert hyped claims into ‘material proof’ (measurable evidence, performance metrics) and ‘social proof’ (endorsements, third-party validations), arguing that when ‘hard’ evidence is scarce, social proof becomes especially important for maintaining legitimacy and stakeholder engagement.

We build on this insight, yet we contend that treating material and social proof as a stable dualism obscures how evidentiary forms intermingle and shift in weight over time. Particularly in fast-moving domains such as the digital economy, artefacts, metrics, endorsements, and narratives migrate across the material–social divide; evidence first received as reputational markers may later solidify into performance benchmarks, and vice versa. To capture these movements, we theorise proof gradients – degrees of materialisation and social endorsement that can thicken, thin, or reverse – and we link these gradients to temporally extended ‘trajectories of evidence’ (Kruse, Reference Kruse2015) through which hype is incrementally tamed.

Chapter 4 illustrated this blurring in the case of vendor ‘customer use cases’. Vendors routinely mobilise such cases to demonstrate deliverability. Yet, as Smith (Reference Smith2009) shows, adopter endorsements often reflect strategic positioning: a customer with sunk investments in a technology has incentives to present its deployment as successful. What appears as objective performance data (material proof) may simultaneously function as reputational evidence (social proof). Evidence, in other words, rarely fits neatly into one category. Indeed, industry analysts labour to disentangle these layers from one vendor briefing to the next – a dynamic visible in our longitudinal archive of briefing transcripts and follow-up interactions (Chapter 4).

Recognising this entanglement pushes us towards a temporally attuned account of evaluation. Prior work (e.g. Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022) captures a ‘snapshot’ of evidentiary practice. Yet hype rarely stands still, as argued in Chapter 2. Claims are reiterated, challenged, reframed, abandoned, or re-substantiated as markets, technologies, and competitive reference points evolve. Treating hype as a short-term resource that is either validated or discarded understates the ongoing work of narrative adjustment and expectations management (Garud et al., 2014) and obscures how legitimacy can be rebuilt after early scepticism or disappointment (Hampel & Dalpiaz, Reference Hampel and Dalpiaz2025).

Our extension draws on Kruse’s (Reference Kruse2015) notion of a ‘trajectory of evidence’ mentioned above – the unfolding path along which claims accumulate, mutate, or erode supporting proof. A trajectory view treats material and social proof not as endpoints but as momentary configurations within a broader sequence of evaluation episodes. Across that sequence, indicators can be upgraded, downgraded, reinterpreted, or supplanted; what counts as credible evidence is negotiated afresh as additional actors, artefacts, and data enter the frame.

The analysts in our study routinely approach early vendor briefings as first data points, not verdicts. One analyst, after several interactions, challenged a start-up: ‘I asked people at [BigTech] about you … and no one’s even heard of you!’ At that moment, the venture’s claims appeared to fail both material validation (no evidence of a partnership) and social validation (no awareness among a key ecosystem player). The start-up responded by refining its narrative and producing new artefacts – evidence of ‘joint pitches’, publicity material, and material highlighting the relationship. Subsequent briefings registered movement along the evidentiary trajectory: from initial scepticism to contingent recognition as proof accumulated.

This episode exemplifies how evaluation unfolds as a process of mutual adjustment, narrative repair, and trajectory building (Garud et al., 2014). In this way, our taming perspective moves beyond the simple snapshot view. It shows that hype is not simply accepted or rejected but tracked, tested, and transformed over time – shaped by evolving evaluative infrastructures and the situated practices of actors such as analysts, analyst relations professionals, and vendors. Identifying the mechanisms that enable these shifts – and their consequences for adoption, investment, and legitimacy – remains an important agenda for future research (Hampel & Dalpiaz, Reference Hampel and Dalpiaz2025).

9.8 Fictional Expectations

Our exploration of taming hype builds on Beckert’s (Reference Beckert2016, Reference Beckert2021) influential concept of fictional expectations – the idea that expectations mobilise investment, coordinate action, and shape economic trajectories (see also Beckert & Bronk, Reference Beckert and Bronk2018). Tracing how particular expectations travel, stick, or fade across evaluative settings remains an open empirical agenda. While Beckert captures their generative power, his account leaves key questions unresolved: How do certain expectations gain traction? What makes some narratives more plausible or persuasive than others? And through what mechanisms are these visions translated into action or held accountable?

We extend Beckert in two moves. First, although Beckert (Reference Beckert2021) recognises that expectations must be judged credible, he does not trace how such judgements are operationalised in practice. We show that structured evaluative systems actively sort, filter, and reshape fictional expectations. Promissory products create selective visibility: they define what counts as credible, timely, and investable. As discussed in Chapter 5, the Cool Vendor designation and its associated analyst briefing process filter ventures through explicit criteria. Many technically promising start-ups fail to qualify because their narratives do not fit the required evaluative format; ventures that do align are flagged and valorised, gaining broader attention and market legitimacy.

Second, we argue that fictional expectations are not merely ‘imaginative projections’ – as emphasised by Beckert – but increasingly formatted futures. While Beckert foregrounds narrative creation, we add the formats that render those narratives legible and actionable. Promissory products encode expectations into routinised evaluative frames (Thévenot, Reference Thévenot1984) that structure how futures can be articulated, compared, and acted upon.Footnote ⁴ For instance, to be flagged as a Cool Vendor, a start-up must fit its story into the template analysts expect – framing its innovation in terms of market relevance, differentiation, and potential impact, while supplying just enough evidence to make the promise appear both credible and exciting. To appear in a Magic Quadrant, a vendor must present both its ‘vision’ and proof of its ‘ability to execute’ – for example, through client references, product demonstrations, and other credibility markers. Thus, ventures can no longer simply invent their own future stories: the projection of futures has become increasingly standardised. To be taken seriously, one must project in an accepted format – otherwise the vision will not even register on the evaluative radar. This helps explain why some narratives, no matter how compelling, never gain traction.

Investments in form (Thévenot, Reference Thévenot1984) are not only stabilising; they are generative. The institutionalisation of promissory formats has produced a class of specialists – analyst relations experts – meaning that a whole new professional class now thrives on teaching ventures how to fit their story to these formats. As hype work becomes professionalised, analyst relations specialists coach vendors on crafting claims that satisfy formal tools and evidence protocols. In this way, fictional expectations are not simply narrated; they are formatted into being – the shape of the story can matter as much as its substance for an expectation to take hold. Ventures must learn to perform to these schemas not only to attract attention but also to become legible within an evaluatively saturated marketplace. This formatting work is central to our broader argument about taming hype: it shows that expectations thrive only when they can be encoded, evaluated, and iteratively adjusted via promissory infrastructures. In short, hype in the wild must enter these managed channels to gain traction.

***

The transformation from wild to tamed hype signals a broader institutionalisation of promissory narratives in the digital economy. As hype becomes more structured, evaluable, and routinised, new forms of expertise, legitimacy, and strategic influence emerge. In Chapter 10, we argue for a dedicated research agenda – Hype Studies – to investigate this institutionalisation and its implications for innovation and the economy.

In this concluding chapter, we call for the establishment of Hype Studies as a programmatic research agenda focused on the phenomenon of hype. We seek here to consolidate the insights of this book into a clear set of principles and directions for future enquiry. Rather than a traditional summary, this chapter serves as an invitation, outlining why hype merits serious scholarly attention, proposing methodological approaches to study it, and highlighting key dimensions – such as expertise, reflexivity, competition, stratification, and speculative cycles – that future hype research should address. Importantly, our call for Hype Studies is offered not as a rigid blueprint but as a starting point for debate. It presents one possible framework for understanding how hype is created, institutionalised, and contested across different contexts, open to refinement and extension by other scholars.

Our enquiry began by examining the work of ‘promissory organisations’ (Pollock & Williams, Reference Pollock and Williams2010) and experts – particularly industry analysts and analyst relations (AR) professionals (Pollock & Williams, Reference Pollock and Williams2016) – and tracing how these actors were developing tools and practices to engage with emerging innovations (Chapple et al., Reference Chapple, Pollock and D’Adderio2022; Pollock et al., Reference Pollock, Chapple, Chen and D’Adderrio2023). Through this lens, we observed a shift from ‘hype in the wild’ to more structured and strategic forms of ‘tamed hype’, exemplified in practices such as the Hype Cycle Chart (HCC). As we studied how this tamed hype was being mobilised alongside more spontaneous forms of expectation work, it became clear that industrial actors were acquiring new capacities to navigate volatile innovation landscapes.

This empirical journey gradually brought us into conversation with what now appears to be a burgeoning, cross-disciplinary field – what we here term Hype Studies. In the course of our research, we encountered scholars from other empirical and disciplinary settings who were engaging, often implicitly, with similar questions: how hype is shaped (Garud et al., Reference Garud, Snihur, Thomas and Phillips2023), how it is institutionalised (Konrad & Alvial-Palavicino, Reference Konrad, Alvial-Palavicino, Konrad, Rohracher and von Schomberg2017; Ometto et al., Reference Ometto, Lounsbury, Gehman, Felin, Foss and Zenger2023), and how it functions as a strategic and evaluative force across different domains (Martin, Reference Martin2015; Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022). We propose the establishment of Hype Studies as a way to unify these disparate research strands that currently touch on hype only indirectly – such as those found in Sociology, Science and Technology Studies (STS), Organisation and Management Theory (OMT), Economic Sociology, Market Studies, Media Studies, and beyond – yet stop short of analysing hype as a discrete, evolving object of governance and strategy.

In what follows, we first argue why hype must be treated as a serious object of study; then, we suggest methods for studying it; and finally, we propose core themes and questions for future research. We conclude with a call to action, inviting scholars to engage with this emerging agenda.

10.1 Developing a Symmetrical Sociology of Hype

Why study hype at all, given its ambivalent status? For many, perhaps the majority, hype remains profoundly problematic (Vinsel & Russell, Reference Vinsel and Russell2020; Funk, Reference Funk2024; Min, Reference Min2024; Bender & Hanna, Reference Bender and Hanna2025). Yet despite its frequently maligned status, other scholars contend that hype is integral to innovation ecosystems (Konrad & Alvial-Palavicino, Reference Konrad, Alvial-Palavicino, Konrad, Rohracher and von Schomberg2017; Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022) and economic dynamism (Beckert, Reference Beckert2016, Reference Beckert2021).

These contrasting perspectives point to a deeper and more persistent issue: the constitutive ambivalence of hype. It is at once enabling and distorting, generative and destabilising. This dual character is not incidental – it is central to how hype operates. Because the outcomes of radical innovation are inherently uncertain, actors must rely on promissory narratives to make decisions and mobilise resources. Hype becomes a necessary vehicle for action in the absence of settled evidence. But the same speculative quality that allows hype to catalyse innovation also makes it vulnerable to exaggeration, disappointment, and critique.

Hype draws its power from precisely this duality: it can coordinate futures while deferring judgement. This ambivalence is not a flaw to be corrected but a condition to be understood. Rather than marginalising it, we argue that ambivalence is constitutive of hype and should be explicitly thematised as such. This recognition underscores the need for a more nuanced analytical stance. We propose that researchers adopt a symmetrical and non-binary perspective on hype, consistent with long-standing social science commitments to tracing the co-production of knowledge, technology, and social order (Jasanoff, Reference Jasanoff2004).

Following the principle of symmetry from the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Bloor, Reference Bloor1976), hype can be studied without presupposing it to be inherently ‘true’ or ‘false’. This requires treating hype not as inherently deceptive or valid but as a social phenomenon enacted in specific contexts, producing effects that are uneven, contingent, and open to empirical investigation. Sometimes hype may indeed mislead and create bubbles; in other instances, it may stimulate constructive action, cooperation, or institutional alignment. A symmetrical approach urges us to trace empirically how and when hype becomes consequential, rather than evaluating it in advance or relying on retrospective judgements.

Adopting hype as an object of study also requires moving beyond the idea that it is uniform or monolithic. As we show throughout the book, hype constitutes a stratified and contested field of promissory claims – a domain in which actors project visions of the future that are evaluated, challenged, or sustained through specific mechanisms. As Beckert (Reference Beckert, Ergen and Maurer2021) notes, future-oriented claims do not circulate on an even footing; some are deemed more plausible or credible than others. This hierarchy of credibility is itself a critical object of study. We invite scholars to investigate how such distinctions are constructed, stabilised, and contested. Which actors or institutions separate credible promises from implausible ones? How do certain narratives come to be accepted as ‘realistic’ expectations, while others are dismissed as ‘mere’ hype?

While our primary focus has been the work of industry analysts and AR professionals, many other gatekeepers shape these dynamics: the media (Vasterman, Reference Vasterman2005; Byrne & Giuliani, Reference Byrne and Giuliani2025; Magalhães & Smit, Reference Magalhães and Smit2025), investors (Spivack et al., Reference Spivack, Lahti, Burström and Wincent2025), governments (Christian et al., Reference Christian, Pollock, Gatzweiller and D’Adderio2025; Veneziano & Gerli, Reference Veneziano and Gerli2025), research funders (Konrad & Alvial-Palavicino, Reference Konrad, Alvial-Palavicino, Konrad, Rohracher and von Schomberg2017), entrepreneurial support organisations (Bergman & McMullen, Reference Bergman and McMullen2022), and so on. Together, these actors participate in the ongoing calibration of hype by parsing its claims and differentiating between what is rendered actionable and what remains speculative.

Recognising this complex ecosystem of actors leads us to consider how our approach aligns with and differs from existing scholarly traditions that have examined futures and expectations.

10.2 Hype Studies and Its Disciplinary Affinities

We are not alone in making these arguments about hype and associated taming processes (though we may be among the first to explicitly foreground them and draw together these disparate elements into a cohesive analytical framework). Our call for Hype Studies has affinities with several emerging and established research strands – notably the Sociology of Expectations, Future Studies, the Sociology of the Future, etc. There are clear affinities with Martin’s (Reference Martin2015, p. 440) account of how ‘the promissory is transformed into the real’, where he highlights the role of promissory organisations – such as analysts and investor advisors – in converting speculative assets into tradeable ones. Rather than counterposing ‘promissory’ and ‘real market’ valuations, his framework draws attention to the processes through which distinctions between the two are negotiated, and how transitions from the ‘regime of promise’ to the ‘regime of truth’ are actively managed. This example illustrates how Hype Studies could extend such work by focusing on the active management of that transition.

Our contribution aligns with a broader shift across multiple disciplines that treats the future as a site of practical engagement rather than a distant abstraction. Scholars in STS and Sociology have begun investigating how futures are constructed and governed in real time, challenging older assumptions that we can only understand expectations in hindsight (Tutton, Reference Tutton2017; Adam, Reference Adam2023; Halford & Southerton, Reference Halford and Southerton2023). It also challenges the legacy of logical positivism (Clardy, Reference Clardy2022), which holds that future claims are inherently unverifiable until retrospectively confirmed – and are therefore a form of ‘non-knowledge’ (Aligica, Reference Aligica2003). Such a perspective is inadequate in contexts of innovation, where decisions must be made under radical uncertainty. The critical question is not whether the future can be known, but how it is rendered actionable in the present (Chapter 3).

In response, scholars have begun to explore the concrete practices through which near-term technology futures are constructed, contested, and institutionalised. Idoko and MacKay (Reference Idoko and MacKay2021) identify a shift within Future Studies towards a practice-oriented perspective. Ethnographic research by McDowall (Reference McDowall2012) demonstrates that innovation roadmaps are not simply predictive artefacts but living instruments, revised over time to manage divergences between expectation and outcome. Garud et al. (2014) introduce the concept of ‘projective stories’ to understand how entrepreneurs mobilise commitment and navigate disappointment. Birch (Reference Birch2023) extends this analysis by emphasising the reflexive dynamics of expectation work: futures are not only projected but are continuously revised, reinterpreted, and contested in light of unfolding developments.

Hype Studies does not attempt to displace existing traditions. Instead, it aims to offer a more integrated, conceptually nuanced, and empirically detailed account of how hype is structured, mediated, and tamed over time. Where Future Studies and the Sociology of Expectations have often focused on early-stage promises or addressed hype only implicitly, our approach drills down into hype as an evolving, institutionalised, and empirically traceable object of study. At the same time, we recognise that drawing sharp boundaries around Hype Studies may risk appearing somewhat artificial. Hype can indeed be seen as one particular form of anticipatory dynamic, naturally linked to broader processes of expectation and anticipation. Our aim, however, is not to separate but to foreground hype as a distinctive configuration within these broader dynamics, thereby consolidating and deepening the empirical study of the phenomenon. These affinities and distinctions suggest that the moment is right for a dedicated Hype Studies approach that brings these strands together. Our next task is to consider how one might systematically study hype as such an object.

10.3 Constructing a Methodological and Analytical Lens for Studying Hype

If we are to treat hype as a serious object of study, we must also consider how to study it. We anticipate that Hype Studies should examine the full lifecycle of hype – from its genesis and amplification, through its operationalisation and evaluation, to its eventual impacts and outcomes. This means developing methods that capture hype in action, rather than reducing it to a feature of ‘start-up culture’ (Wadhwani & Lubinski, Reference Wadhwani and Lubinski2025) or theorising it in the abstract. Research that ranges too broadly across multiple spheres and temporalities without clear empirical grounding risks producing overgeneralised accounts and obscuring the fine-grained processes at stake. Armchair theorising risks reifying hype as an ‘unbounded resource’ (Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022), detached from the organisational practices that produce and manage it. Our agenda, therefore, calls for systematic, empirically grounded studies that trace how hype is generated, channelled, and evaluated within specific organisational and institutional settings. This involves treating hype not as abstract ‘buzz’ (Pontikes & Barnett, Reference Pontikes and Barnett2017) but as a structured set of practices that can be observed, analysed, and compared across contexts.

Despite hype’s evident influence in innovation processes, few empirical studies place it at the centre of analysis. More often, hype is addressed only tangentially – treated as a by-product of entrepreneurship or technology ventures rather than as a driving force in its own right (see Bourne, Reference Bourne2024). This reflects a broader methodological challenge: we currently lack approaches for examining hype in action. While our book has laid some groundwork – for example, by suggesting the study of tamed hype – much more remains to be done.

Studying hype means engaging with an amorphous and elusive set of practices. Hype is not confined to a single site; it unfolds across multiple (ultimately unbounded), overlapping promissory arenas, producing effects that ripple across domains, actors, and formats. We found that the most consequential hype work often occurs in liminal spaces opaque to outsiders – closed-door meetings, analyst briefings, pitch sessions, strategy discussions, and so on – where actors actively shape and respond to hype. Its distributed, liminal character makes hype difficult to study using conventional social-science methods. In this sense, applying the concept of hype in empirical research is not only methodologically demanding and perhaps also in consequence analytically underdeveloped.

This elusiveness is not unique to hype – it reflects a broader paradox familiar in social science: the more powerful a phenomenon is, the harder it often becomes to study directly – a ‘black box’, as Latour (Reference Latour1987) would say. The most consequential social forces are frequently the most opaque, operating across sites. Hype, when effective, is subsumed into institutional routines and infrastructures, with its origins disappearing into the machinery of markets, policies, and innovations it helped bring about. This means Hype Studies must be especially innovative methodologically and analytically.

10.4 The Multi-Scalar Life of Hype

Our investigation thus adopted a multi-scalar perspective on hype. We traced how hype is produced, mobilised, and consumed across different levels of social and organisational life. Our starting point was sustained empirical engagement with promissory organisations (Pollock & Williams, Reference Pollock and Williams2010) in the digital economy and new forms of expertise, tools, and practices that are deployed in concrete market arenas (Pollock & Williams, Reference Pollock and Williams2016). The pivoting of analyst attention, responding to client interest, from established towards emerging products led us to study hype itself, extending the Sociology of Expectations into downstream domains where the speculative becomes economically actionable. As we began to track the creation, circulation, assessment, and consumption of hype, we quickly encountered evolving forms of expertise, shared vocabularies (such as the stages of a HCC and product categories), and representational formats across new tools.

Crucially, this multi-level, multi-temporal engagement allows us to connect the multiple (nested and overlapping) promissory arenas in which hype is circulated, assessed, and consumed (Smets et al., Reference Smets, Morris and Greenwood2012). We observed, for example, how micro-level interactions – such as a vendor reconfiguring its pitch in response to an analyst’s feedback – feed into meso-level patterns like industry rankings and categories, which in turn accumulate into macro-level shifts in market perception. In doing so, we extend Beckert’s (Reference Beckert2013, p. 323) claim that the ‘management of expectations’ is central to contemporary capitalism, while contributing to his call for connecting micro-level practices with macro-level transformations.

We foreground the multi-scalar character of hype by examining its variation across both time and organisational scope – from short-term cycles of attention and adaptation to longer-term processes of institutionalisation and market restructuring. Rather than treat hype as a single, static phenomenon, we show that it operates on multiple levels. Specifically, hype plays out in:

• Everyday interactions, where hype is locally produced, tested, and consumed;

• Short-term adjustments, including how actors recalibrate in response to gatekeeper scrutiny and how they develop tactics to shape and channel expectations;

• Longer-term shifts, such as the emergence of new evaluative infrastructures and specialised forms of expertise.

This dynamic interplay brings into focus how hype circulates through, and shapes, different layers of the digital economy. For example, our analysis of the HCC reveals it to be not just a neutral mapping tool but an influential promissory product that appears to actively co-produce the innovation landscape. At one level, the HCC is an everyday market device for organisations trying to gauge whether to invest in a technology now or later. At another level, it represents a short-term cycle of collective adjustment: by publicly designating certain technologies as peaking or troughing in hype, Gartner’s analysts influence how market actors recalibrate their expectations and plans. At a broader level, the HCC itself has become an obligatory point of passage – it codifies a patterned way of thinking about the sea of hype, effectively guiding the allocation of attention and capital in the digital economy. In our study, we found that tools like the HCC do more than reflect the state of excitement; they actively shape the trajectory of innovation by signalling when to be sceptical and when to invest.

Similarly, micro-level interactions supply much of the content that populates these promissory products. In vendor–analyst briefing meetings, for example, plausibility and credibility are continually negotiated. We documented how start-ups (like Juvo) went through repeated rounds of narrative refinement in conversations with industry analysts. Over time, those iterative pitches and feedback loops helped crystallise a new market category – ‘Financial Identity as a Service’ – which repositioned the venture and signalled to the broader market how this innovation should be understood. Such episodes show that local narrative work can scale up, contributing to shifts in how entire sectors define and evaluate emerging technologies.

Our multi-scalar view also highlights the rise of powerful gatekeeping actors, particularly analyst firms – the ‘professional evaluators’ (Mützel, Reference Mützel2022) of the promissory economy – and the new expertise of AR. Analyst firms collectively represent a multi-billion-pound market, and AR professionals have carved out a thriving consulting niche, all profiting from the cultivation and steering of promissory narratives. Far from being passive observers, these firms now function as what Giorgi and Weber (Reference Giorgi and Weber2015, p. 357) call ‘conversation makers’, shaping how entire sectors and vendors are evaluated. They underwrite a managed, industrial-scale form of hype circulation that is distinct from the more chaotic dynamics of ‘hype in the wild’.

This layered, multi-scalar analysis of hype marks a distinctive contribution of our work. Whereas existing accounts often rely on isolated anecdotes (Bourne, Reference Bourne2024) or single-point observations (Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022), our analysis maps the circuitry of hype over time and across space. We show that what happens in the short term ultimately shapes longer-term outcomes. Below, we summarise these insights in Box 10.1, which contrasts short-term adaptations and longer-term institutionalisation in the hype process.

Together, these processes reveal a maturing promissory economy, where hype is not only produced but governed – reflexively managed by actors who recognise their mutual role in shaping its trajectory. In the next section, we draw these insights into a framework for analysing how hype has become institutionalised within the digital economy.

10.5 Elements for a Future Research Agenda

We propose some elements for a research agenda to deepen understanding of how hype functions as a structured element of economic coordination. This is not a definitive or exhaustive set of questions. They emerge from our empirical material in the digital economy, identifying five interrelated elements through which hype is stabilised, contested, and rendered actionable. The enquiry is bound to be incomplete. Nonetheless, we hope it provides a helpful starting point for exploring how hype is not only structured by institutional processes but also actively reshapes the dynamics of innovation and markets.

10.6 Hype beyond the Digital Economy

While our analysis has focused on the digital economy, we regard this sector as exemplary for understanding hype dynamics more widely. Our broader aim is to open the way for comparative work. We conjecture that the deliberate practices of taming hype identified here – professionalised expertise, reflexive management, competition structured through evaluation, processes of stratification, etc. – are also evident in other fields. A research programme on hype should therefore compare and generalise across domains, rather than remain anchored in a single context. Hype Studies, as we envision it, offers a lens applicable wherever promissory narratives and imagined futures organise innovation, mobilise investment, and shape decision-making.

Such comparative work should investigate how institutionalised forms of hype migrate across sectors, and how different fields adapt, adopt, or resist practices of evaluation and future-making. We conjecture that organisations across diverse industries – not just in the digital economy – are increasingly developing structured approaches to navigate hype. Indeed, one might begin from the premise that hype is a distinctive corollary of all discontinuous innovation. We posit that any sector characterised by rapid, discontinuous innovation will exhibit high levels of hype and the emergence of hype-management institutions.

Historical and contemporary cases – from nanotech and hydrogen to artificial intelligence (AI) and most recently quantum computing augmented by Large Language Models (LLMs) – illustrate how successive waves of enthusiasm, investment, disappointment, and recalibration unfold (Bakker & Budde, Reference Bakker and Budde2012). Yet the form hype takes, and the degree to which it can be structured or ‘tamed’, varies widely. For instance, compare the relatively short hype cycles in smartphone apps to the decades-long promissory horizons of nuclear fusion. In the latter case, researchers have been observed generating excitement around relatively modest advances in order to sustain attention and attract investment over time (Funk, Reference Funk2019; Minkkinen et al., Reference Minkkinen, Zimmer and Mäntymäki2023). This kind of long-term promissory work exemplifies what Powers (Reference Powers2019) calls the ‘strategic calibration’ of hype – keeping expectations alive while avoiding ‘fatigue’ or ‘backlash’.

These variations reflect the different exigencies of the ‘promissory game’: the time horizons of the innovation journey, its degree of uncertainty or capital intensity, and the scale of anticipated payoff. Radical, long-horizon innovations such as nuclear fusion or hydrogen energy demand continuous hype work to maintain attention and legitimacy over decades, whereas more incremental domains like consumer apps rely on carefully timed bursts of enthusiasm calibrated to market cycles. Across these domains, actors mobilise ideas of ‘technological maturity’ (Roussel, Reference Roussel1984) to codify progress, but innovation pathways diverge widely in scientific and technical difficulty, investment requirements, institutional buy-in, and infrastructure demands.

The digital economy is characterised by a vast and constantly evolving market of business technologies that cut across sectoral boundaries. In this environment, industry analysts have become pivotal in constituting arenas of evaluation and comparison, providing the coherence and benchmarks needed to navigate such a fragmented and fast-moving space. This stands in contrast to specialised fields such as healthcare or the life sciences, where analysts coexist with sectoral-specific organisations like ‘industry associations’ (Martin, Reference Martin2015). These latter organisations may lack the breadth and visibility of an industry analyst firm like Gartner, but they offer in-depth, domain-specific expertise and often operate within established professional or regulatory frameworks. Another distinctive feature of the digital economy is the relatively limited role of the state. Unlike sectors such as energy, defence, or pharmaceuticals – where policy intervention, regulation, and public funding strongly shape expectations – the digital economy has developed mainly outside formal governance (Malerba, Reference Malerba2002). This has left a vacuum of coordination, which analysts and related experts have been able to fill by structuring expectations, defining categories, and taming hype. AI and quantum computing may be partial exceptions, but even in these cases, public initiatives operate alongside the powerful evaluative influence of analysts.

From this vantage point, tamed hype appears as part of a broader reconfiguration of how futures are organised. Organisations across sectors increasingly rely on routines and tools to interpret, manage, and act upon hype in real time, rather than adopting a passive ‘wait-and-see’ stance (Robinson et al., Reference Robinson, Le Masson and Weil2012). Promissory products, roadmaps (Miller & O’Leary, Reference Miller and O’Leary2007), investment schedules (Mallaby, Reference Mallaby2022), and evaluative frameworks render the future more calculable without making it certain. As Appadurai (Reference Appadurai, Kemp and Andersson2021) argues, this reflects the progressive ‘socialisation’ of the future: expectations are shaped and circulated through professional practices, institutional conventions, and infrastructures of valuation. In parallel, Mützel (Reference Mützel2022) points to the growing ‘market of expectations’, in which diverse actors exchange, evaluate, and institutionalise future imaginaries. Wenzel et al. (Reference Wenzel, Krämer, Koch and Reckwitz2020, Reference Wenzel, Cabantous and Koch2025) describe this as the ‘commodification’ of the near future, whereby expectations are packaged, priced, and systematically appraised.

Comparable figures to industry analysts can be found well beyond the digital economy. In finance, financial analysts construct visions of future returns (Leins, Reference Leins2018), while rating agencies discipline rather than register speculation, moderating dynamics through their ratings (Feher, Reference Feher2021). In the pharmaceutical industry, experts actively manage and channel hype (Mützel, Reference Mützel2022). In the life sciences, industry associations operate as collective evaluators (Martin, Reference Martin2015). And in healthcare, specialist firms such as Klas explicitly style themselves as the ‘Gartner for healthcare’. More broadly, consultants, think tanks, and funding bodies all play central roles in producing, legitimising, and evaluating promissory narratives.

Importantly, practices of taming are not confined to one sector but travel across domains. Professionals carry evaluative tools, repertoires, and frameworks with them, reshaping how hype is organised and contained in new contexts. The founder of Gartner, for example, imported techniques from his earlier career as a financial analyst into the emerging computing industry when establishing the firm (Pollock & Williams, Reference Pollock and Williams2016).

Organisations across sectors now routinely scan for signals, threats, and opportunities, triggering proactive action (Kumaraswamy et al., Reference Kumaraswamy, Garud and Ansari2018). This reflects a cultural and strategic orientation in which the future is increasingly populated with tools – roadmaps, investment schedules, benchmarks – that make it manageable without making it certain. These tools do not provide foresight in a deterministic sense (Thompson & Byrne, Reference Thompson and Byrne2022), but they enable action and adaptation as futures unfold. As Urry (Reference Urry2016, p. 192) observes, the future is no longer fixed or fated but a contested, ‘murky world’ that we must ‘enter, interrogate, and hopefully reshape’.

Understanding these sectoral variations in hype practices will be crucial, especially as we consider how hype’s institutionalisation intersects with broader societal and policy concerns (as we discuss next).

10.7 Responsible Hype

Hype’s consequences extend well beyond organisational strategy and adopter attention. Its institutionalisation carries far-reaching implications for public funding, regulation, and the governance of innovation. Hype influences how governments allocate resources, shapes the construction of policy agendas, and determines which futures become thinkable. If hype is now, in part, a structured resource that directs attention and capital, policymakers can no longer treat it as background noise.

Some critics have called for curbing hype altogether (Funk, Reference Funk2019; Vinsel & Russell, Reference Vinsel and Russell2020), but this position is both reductive and infeasible. As this book has argued, hype is not simply a problem to be solved; it is a persistent feature of innovation ecosystems, particularly in the digital economy. This persistence places a greater burden on public actors, who must become literate in the mechanisms of hype – able not only to navigate but, when appropriate, to harness it. Hype Studies can contribute to this task by offering public institutions a more nuanced understanding of hype, and of the tools and strategies deployed by hype’s new actors. Such knowledge is essential for leveraging hype’s mobilising potential while mitigating its distorting effects.

Governments and public agencies are increasingly implicated in hype – not only as funders or regulators but also as customers, partners, and architects of innovation-led growth (Mazzucato, Reference Mazzucato2011). They are swept up in global innovation races, responding to international rankings and anticipatory narratives. When public institutions support R&D, they often amplify hype to justify investment and stimulate action, invoking the risk of falling behind or missing out.

A formative example is the US response to Japan’s Fifth Generation Computing programme in the 1980s, when the Department of Defence raised alarms about a looming AI capability gap. This was the first of several high-profile episodes of techno-nationalism – followed by genetic engineering, nanotechnology, big data, and supercomputing – that illustrate how hype becomes entwined with geopolitical and industrial strategy (Smith, Reference Smith2020). More recently, governments worldwide have launched ambitious AI R&D programmes, often invoking similar narratives of urgency and competitive threat (Minkkinen et al., Reference Minkkinen, Zimmer and Mäntymäki2023).

Yet this entanglement is not without risk. Governments can become too caught up in the excitement, mirroring private investors in triggering speculative bubbles. Public funding surges, start-ups proliferate, and vendors and intermediaries eagerly attach themselves to the momentum. The result is often public investment that mimics speculative markets, complete with cycles of enthusiasm, disillusionment, and even crashes.

Policymakers often feel pressure to back frontier technologies. As Nordmann (Reference Nordmann2007) argues, hyped expectations can trigger an ‘if and then’ syndrome: once speculative futures are accepted, debate shifts to how best to prepare for them, rather than whether they should be pursued at all. Hype can thus foreclose deliberation, making speculative trajectories feel inevitable and narrowing the range of considered alternatives.

Distinguishing genuinely transformative innovation from overhyped speculation is far from straightforward (Kriechbaum et al., Reference Kriechbaum, Prol and Posch2018). Enthusiasm can distort priorities: public actors may overestimate technological maturity, underestimate barriers to scale, and direct resources towards areas already saturated with private-sector interest. In the absence of counter-narratives, commercial excitement is often taken as a proxy for opportunity or social need – meaning that alternative innovation pathways, including those with potentially greater societal value, may remain underfunded or ignored (Tracey & Stott, Reference Tracey and Stott2017; Gray & Purdy, Reference Gray and Purdy2018; Beckman et al., Reference Beckman, Rosen, Estrada-Miller and Painter2023).

The state’s responsibility goes beyond competitiveness. Public institutions must also consider the directionality of innovation – its social and ethical aims, not merely its market potential. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) frameworks urge that innovation be anticipatory, inclusive, and reflective (Owen et al., Reference Owen, Macnaghten and Stilgoe2020). By extension, Responsible Hype is a stance in which stakeholders actively channel hype’s energy towards socially beneficial outcomes while mitigating its risks (Simakova & Coenen, Reference Simakova, Coenen, Owen, Bessant and Heintz2013).

Hype is more than rhetoric: it is also a structuring mechanism and resource (van Lente, Reference Van Lente2012; Logue & Grimes, Reference Logue and Grimes2022). In its tamed form, hype creates ‘protected spaces’ (van Lente & Rip, Reference Van Lente, Rip, Disco and van der Meulen1998) where emerging technologies can develop under the shelter of optimism and commitment. Such spaces can be valuable, but they also raise questions of equity: who benefits from hype, and whose futures are being legitimised? As this book has shown, attention and legitimacy are increasingly allocated through professionalised mechanisms involving hype’s new actors – actors who can amplify, dampen, or redirect expectations, shaping the boundaries of these protected spaces. These processes determine not only which innovations succeed but also where and for whom they succeed.

If tamed hype is central to how ventures are legitimised and resourced, then policymakers must confront the question of distribution: How evenly is this resource spread across geographies, organisations, and communities? Who controls the hype – and by extension, who controls the future being imagined?

Governments could use hype proactively to foster a more inclusive innovation economy. Innovation support programmes, for instance, might include mechanisms to help underrepresented ventures engage with hype’s new actors – by offering guidance on working with analysts, crafting strategic narratives, or preparing for high-impact evaluations.

Governments could also strategically recast hype, aligning neglected domains with dominant technological narratives. Framing social issues such as elderly care (Christian et al., Reference Christian, Pollock, Gatzweiller and D’Adderio2025) or environmental challenges (Downs, Reference Downs, Protess and McCombs2016) as promising innovation frontiers could mobilise private-sector engagement. Through structured initiatives such as competitions and targeted calls, public actors can bring overlooked problems ‘onto the agenda’ (Protess & McCombs, Reference Protess and McCombs2016), transforming diffuse concerns into coordinated investment and development (Christian et al., Reference Christian, Pollock, Gatzweiller and D’Adderio2025).

While hype functions as a vital resource for innovation, it remains unevenly distributed. Advancing a more inclusive innovation economy will require sustained attention to the sites and mechanisms through which hype is articulated and tamed. Democratising hype entails greater transparency in evaluative processes, broader access to evaluation arenas, and targeted capacity-building for ventures and organisations in underrepresented contexts to engage with – and benefit from – the business of hyped expectations.

***

Overall, After Hype has shown that we live in a world where hype is no longer entirely wild but in part tamed – and has become a business in its own right. This concluding chapter argues that recognising and scrutinising this evolution is crucial for understanding contemporary innovation and capitalism. Hype Studies offers a critical lens for examining and navigating this shift. We see it as a framework for developing more informed and reflexive approaches to technological change, and we invite scholars from across disciplines to join us in shaping this emerging area.