Bleeding edge technology is technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 that is so new that it could have a high risk of being unreliable and may incur greater expense in order to use it. The term bleeding edge is formed as an allusion

Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...

 to "leading edge" and its synonym cutting edge, but tends to imply both a greater degree of risk and advancement.

Criteria

A technology may be considered bleeding edge where it contains a degree of risk, or, more generally, there is a significant downside to early adoption, such as:

• Lack of consensus — competing ways of doing new things exist and there is little to no indication in which direction the market will go; there is unfamiliarity with the product.
• Lack of knowledge — organizations are trying to implement a new technology or product that the trade journal
  Trade journal
  A trade magazine, also called a professional magazine, is a magazine published with the intention of target marketing to a specific industry or type of trade. The collective term for this area of publishing is the trade press....
  
  s have not even started talking about yet, either for or against.
• Industry resistance to change — trade journals and industry leaders have spoken against a new technology or product but some organizations are trying to implement it anyway because they are convinced it is technically superior.

Costs and benefits

The rewards for successful early adoption of new technologies can be great in terms of established a comparative advantage

Comparative advantage

In economics, the law of comparative advantage says that two countries will both gain from trade if, in the absence of trade, they have different relative costs for producing the same goods...

 in otherwise competitive markets; unfortunately, the penalties for "betting on the wrong horse" (e.g. in a format war

Format war

A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the same market, typically for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political and financial influence on content publishers by the...

) or choosing the wrong product are equally large. Whenever an organization decides to take a chance on bleeding edge technology there is a chance that they will be stuck with a white elephant

White elephant

A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth...

 or worse.

Bleeding edge computer software, especially open source software, is especially common. Indeed, it is usual practice for open source developers

Software developer

A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...

 to release new, bleeding edge, versions of their software fairly frequently, sometimes in a rather unpolished state to allow others to review, test, and, in many cases, contribute to. Therefore users who want features that have not been implemented in older, more stable releases of the software are able to choose the bleeding edge version. In such cases the user is willing to sacrifice stability or ease of use for the sake of increased functionality.