silicon.com agenda setters - A pointless list?
An email from silicon.com arrived in my inbox today. The first line read “Who are the most influential individuals in the technology industry?” You can assume it got my attention.
Silicon.com publishes an annual list of agenda setters, those folks that drive the technology industry forwards. It’s always an interesting exercise, probably fun to compile and debate, much like The Times Rich List, Time magazine’s Time 100, and your own list of all-time favourite songs.
It is also, like the other lists, ultimately pointless. What decisions will be made based on the silicon.com list? Will anyone do something different, or create something new? You can’t even use it as a predictor of stock market value. The agenda setters list is irrelevant to most IT professionals.
I doubt whether I’d have bothered to blog on the list if it wasn’t for the more subtle problem with the list. It’s to do with the focus of influence. That is, who is being influenced by the influencers on the list. The answer is, most probably, other people on the list. Meg Whitman is influenced by Jack Ma, and buys Skype. Ray Ozzie is influenced by Steve Jobs, and launches Zunes. Jonathan Schwartz is influenced by Steve Jobs, and restores the fortunes of a failing company (we’ll have to see whether that story ends happily…).
Your average IT decision maker, on the other hand, is unlikely ever to make contact with Messrs Ma, Ozzie, Jobs and the other top execs named on the list. The typical IT Director is more likely to be influenced by an independent consultant you’ve never heard of. Or a trusted reseller. Or an influential blogger.
It’s the people with low profiles that carry influence at an everyday, practical level. They may not make a very exciting list. But they make the IT industry work.
Silicon.com publishes an annual list of agenda setters, those folks that drive the technology industry forwards. It’s always an interesting exercise, probably fun to compile and debate, much like The Times Rich List, Time magazine’s Time 100, and your own list of all-time favourite songs.
It is also, like the other lists, ultimately pointless. What decisions will be made based on the silicon.com list? Will anyone do something different, or create something new? You can’t even use it as a predictor of stock market value. The agenda setters list is irrelevant to most IT professionals.
I doubt whether I’d have bothered to blog on the list if it wasn’t for the more subtle problem with the list. It’s to do with the focus of influence. That is, who is being influenced by the influencers on the list. The answer is, most probably, other people on the list. Meg Whitman is influenced by Jack Ma, and buys Skype. Ray Ozzie is influenced by Steve Jobs, and launches Zunes. Jonathan Schwartz is influenced by Steve Jobs, and restores the fortunes of a failing company (we’ll have to see whether that story ends happily…).
Your average IT decision maker, on the other hand, is unlikely ever to make contact with Messrs Ma, Ozzie, Jobs and the other top execs named on the list. The typical IT Director is more likely to be influenced by an independent consultant you’ve never heard of. Or a trusted reseller. Or an influential blogger.
It’s the people with low profiles that carry influence at an everyday, practical level. They may not make a very exciting list. But they make the IT industry work.
Labels: influencer marketing, influencers
posted by Duncan Brown at 5:34 pm
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