Acknowledgements

We didn’t set out to write a book about hype. What began as a modest attempt to write a short paper on the Hype Cycle Chart grew into something more ambitious. We imagined a relatively quick piece on the chart – perhaps a year of work at most. But the deeper we delved, the more we realised how little we understood about the phenomenon of hype itself. Nor did we find much academic guidance to help us. The further we explored, the more expansive – and elusive – the topic became.

Several years later, this book is the result of that initial enquiry. In many ways, it is the book we wished had existed when we first set out to understand the Hype Cycle Chart. It is also a book about how a deceptively simple chart opened up a much larger set of questions – about markets, futures, evaluation, and the machinery that organises what John Maynard Keynes famously called the ‘animal spirits’ of the economy. Hype, we came to see, was not simply a by-product of innovation but a structuring force – one that shapes how technology futures are imagined, contested, and acted upon.

To our knowledge, this is the first book devoted entirely to the phenomenon of hype. While scholars have examined adjacent concepts – such as bubbles, speculation, expectations, and promissory discourse – hype itself has rarely been the direct focus of sustained analysis. And yet it plays a critical role in the innovation economy: directing attention, mobilising capital, and coordinating belief. Writing a book about something so pervasive yet under-theorised has been far from easy. But we have been fortunate to draw on the support, encouragement, and generosity of a wide community of institutions, colleagues, and friends.

We are especially indebted to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), whose funding, through the Ranking the Rankers (ES/M007626/1) and The Second Most Important Pitch (ES/R010447/1) projects, made the empirical work in this book possible.

Neil Pollock carried out the majority of the fieldwork, with assistance and accompaniment at various stages from several valued collaborators. Duncan Chapple undertook some of the fieldwork reported in Chapter 4, Suwen Chen conducted several of the interviews described in Chapter 5, and Najmeh Hafezieh participated in many of the interviews that inform Chapter 6.

Throughout the long course of researching and writing, we were sustained by the insights, criticisms, and encouragement of many colleagues and friends. Our sincere thanks go to Michael Barrett, Suwen Chen, Yusun Cheng, Alex Christian, Jean Clarke, Franck Cochoy, Elizabeth Davidson, Luciana D’Adderio, Vassilis Galanos, Marian Gatzweiler, Susie Geiger, Vern Glaser, Nina Granqvist, Matthew Grimes, Najmeh Hafezieh, Richard Harrison, Sampsa Hyysalo, Pierre Joly, Christian Koch, Kornelia Konrad, Martin Kornberger, Donald MacKenzie, Paul Martin, Katy Mason, Liz McFall, Gemma Milne, Eric Monteiro, Teea Palo, Michael Power, Paolo Quattrone, Susan Scott, Richard Tutton, and Harro van Lente, whose feedback, encouragement, and good humour helped bring this project to completion.

We would especially like to thank Harro van Lente, Kornelia Konrad, Vassilis Galanos, Alex Christian, and Aaron Pagel, who provided helpful comments on an early draft of the book.

We are also grateful to Najmeh Hafezieh and Marian Gatzweiler (co-authors of Chapter 6) for permission to use our joint work here.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the many industry analysts and analyst relations professionals who generously shared their time, insights, and engaged in discussions throughout our research projects. We are grateful to Duncan Chapple, who not only introduced us to many of the experts whose voices appear in these pages but also sharpened our thinking through his thoughtful suggestions and reflections. We also owe a special debt of gratitude to Chris Holscher, Robin Schaffer, and Ludovic Leforestier, who facilitated our research in numerous different ways. Our thanks also go to Jackie Fenn, who graciously shared her recollections of the creation of the Hype Cycle Chart on two occasions – an origin story that helped shape the framing of this book.

We are grateful to Grace Ochieng for her editorial support during the final stages of the book, and to Cambridge University Press’ Carrie Parkinson and Valerie Appleby for their enthusiastic response to our initial hype‑book proposal.

Finally, some parts of this book draw on fieldwork that has been previously published elsewhere. Chapter 4 is based on Chapple et al. (Reference Chapple, Pollock and D’Adderio2022); Chapter 5 on Pollock et al. (Reference Pollock, Chapple, Chen and D’Adderrio2023); Chapter 7 on Pollock et al. (Reference Lo, Rhee, Lo and Rhee2022); and Chapter 8 on Pollock et al. (2021). We are grateful to the copyright holders for their permission to reuse this material here.