A simple interpretation of the growth of scientific/technological research impact leading to hype-type evolution curves

The empirical and theoretical justification of Gartner "hype curves" is a very relevant open question in the field of Technological Life Cycle analysis. The scope of the present paper is to introduce a simple model describing the growth of scientific/technological research impact, in the specific case where science is the main source of a new idea driving a technological development, leading to "hype-type" evolution curves. The main idea of the model is that, in a first stage, the growth of the scientific interest of a new specific field (as can be measured by publication numbers) basically follows the classical "logistic" growth curve. At a second stage, starting at a later trigger time, the technological development based on that scientific idea (as can be measured by patent deposits) can be described as the integral (in a mathematical sense) of the first curve, since technology is based on the overall accumulated scientific knowledge. The model is preliminary tested through a bibliometric analysis of the publication and patent deposit rate for organic light emitting diodes scientific research and technology.