How Industry Analysts Shape the Digital Future
Neil Pollock and Robin Williams
Abstract
This book explores the emergence of a new class of expert—the industry analyst—whose advice has enormous impacts across IT markets. In just over 30 years, Gartner Inc. has emerged as market leader with 40 per cent of the revenue of this $4.4 billion industry. Gideon Gartner in establishing the firm that bears his name created a distinctive model for offering and trading advisory services that could primarily help technology adopters facing difficult procurement decisions. The book will provide detailed empirical focus on Gartner’s innovations which include novel approaches to generating, valid ... More
This book explores the emergence of a new class of expert—the industry analyst—whose advice has enormous impacts across IT markets. In just over 30 years, Gartner Inc. has emerged as market leader with 40 per cent of the revenue of this $4.4 billion industry. Gideon Gartner in establishing the firm that bears his name created a distinctive model for offering and trading advisory services that could primarily help technology adopters facing difficult procurement decisions. The book will provide detailed empirical focus on Gartner’s innovations which include novel approaches to generating, validating, and defending their pronouncements about the digital futures (‘IT predictions’), their differential assessments of the capabilities and prospects of vendors in the market (through its signature product the ‘Magic Quadrant’), and its potent naming interventions (‘product classifications’). These assessments, though much criticised, are all highly influential, having reshaped understandings and actions within emerging and current technology fields. Drawing on recent debates within science and technology studies, economic sociology, accounting, marketing and organisation studies, the book examines the extent to which industry analysts’ advice is ‘performative’: framing understandings within sectors and pushing or ‘nudging’ innovation pathways or technology procurement choices in particular directions. The book argues that what may be at stake is less the performativity of knowledge and more how knowledge is performed.
Keywords:
industry analysts,
performativity,
Gartner Inc,
future,
rankings,
digital,
financial analysts,
IT predictions,
market research,
advisory firms
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198704928 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198704928.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Neil Pollock, author
Professor of Innovation and Social Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Robin Williams, author
Director, Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, The University of Edinburgh
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