Open Source Analysts - taking on the big boys
I’m really interested in the emergence of a concept called open source analysis. Essentially, it’s an approach that links smaller industry analyst firms in collaboration – the analogy is with the open source software movement that allows programmers from all points to collaborate by contributing their programming expertise.
It’s unclear whether collaboration refers to research and opinion or to commercial relationships, or both (or neither?!). Interested parties have established a wiki project to sort out the detail.
I’m watching developments with interest because of the potential impact on the big influential analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester. It’s long been my contention that influence is a factor of the individual and the firm. In other words, some analysts are influential primarily because they work at a big firm, and some are influential because of their individual knowledge and expertise despite working for a small firm (or for themselves). But the most influential analysts both work for a big firm and are true experts individually. This is true in all but a few exceptions.
The open source movement aims to change this dynamic. There is the obvious commercial impact, that of individual analysts combining to deliver collectively a major project beyond the resource capability of each on their own. Freelance contractors have done this for decades.
The other potential impact is to collaborate on research, the intellectual property of analysts itself. The key challenge here is quality control. Collating input from a variety of different sources requires some oversight on quality, lest the overall value of the opinion and advice be diminished. Blogs already suffer from this dilution of credibility, and if open source analysis is to differentiate itself from “mere” blogs it must sort this out.
Unless, of course, blogs undermine the business case for analysts altogether…?
There’s no doubt that there are some smart analysts outside the major analyst firms – the Neils at MWD (former colleagues of mine), James Governor and so on. I’d like to see them increase their profile and influence because they have much value to add to the industry.
If open source analysis enables this then I’m all for it.
It’s unclear whether collaboration refers to research and opinion or to commercial relationships, or both (or neither?!). Interested parties have established a wiki project to sort out the detail.
I’m watching developments with interest because of the potential impact on the big influential analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester. It’s long been my contention that influence is a factor of the individual and the firm. In other words, some analysts are influential primarily because they work at a big firm, and some are influential because of their individual knowledge and expertise despite working for a small firm (or for themselves). But the most influential analysts both work for a big firm and are true experts individually. This is true in all but a few exceptions.
The open source movement aims to change this dynamic. There is the obvious commercial impact, that of individual analysts combining to deliver collectively a major project beyond the resource capability of each on their own. Freelance contractors have done this for decades.
The other potential impact is to collaborate on research, the intellectual property of analysts itself. The key challenge here is quality control. Collating input from a variety of different sources requires some oversight on quality, lest the overall value of the opinion and advice be diminished. Blogs already suffer from this dilution of credibility, and if open source analysis is to differentiate itself from “mere” blogs it must sort this out.
Unless, of course, blogs undermine the business case for analysts altogether…?
There’s no doubt that there are some smart analysts outside the major analyst firms – the Neils at MWD (former colleagues of mine), James Governor and so on. I’d like to see them increase their profile and influence because they have much value to add to the industry.
If open source analysis enables this then I’m all for it.
Labels: analyst relations, influencers, open source, OSAA
posted by Duncan Brown at 12:54 pm
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