Methodologies
At the crossroads: Opportunities for AR
“AR has a great opportunity” to close the social media loop, Jonny Bentwood told us this week. As the strategy guru at Edelman responsible for social media and analyst relations, he has a powerful insight into the discussion on AR’s future.
“As influence becomes more important and traditional stakeholder models become less focussed, AR can show […]
Misapplication of IIAR survey gives tactical opportunities to AR managers
One of the most easily available ‘rankings’ of industry analysts mistakenly focusses on a subset of analysts whose most common feature is that IIAR members find them easy to work with. The All The Analyst (ATA) Analyst Web Rankings encourage less experienced AR managers to focus on vendor-funded analysts. As a result, more strategic AR […]
23Nov2008 | Duncan Chapple | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy vendors mistake analysts’ primary task as being forecasting
Thanks to Efrem Mallach for flagging up an interesting new article: Matt Asay’s criticism of analysts’ failures at making accurate market predictions. Matt’s argument is that analysts are great at understanding the present and past, but they are weak at what clients pay analysts for - understanding the future. However, we feel that’s mistaken: there […]
7Sep2008 | Duncan Chapple | 3 comments | ContinuedMasterclass explores technology forecasting
Industry analysts, and those who want to understand them, should know about the annual Foresight course at PREST (Policy Research in Engineering, Science and Technology), part of Manchester Business School. Foresight stresses the scanning, scenario development and evaluation needed in forecasting technology.
Lighthouse is keen to develop understanding of methodology on both sides of the analyst […]
"Open Source"? Or Crowd Surfing?
During a recent blog post discussing what many are referring to as open source analysts, I made some comments about one specific company, Freeform Dynamics, that with hindsight could have been interpreted as calling into the question the integrity and objectivity of its research.
Following an exchange with the company, I would like to make it […]
Longhaus: what’s the difference with open source analysis?
Sam Higgins has written an article evaluating OSA, a project on open source and alternative analysis, in the new issue of Longview, the newsletter of Australian analyst firm Longhaus.
Higgins stresses the need of analysis to be set in context, and how services are often needed to make research useable.
When considering the role of OSA within […]
ICT numbers and their reliability
A new paper from Berlecon is an important broadside against much of the rest of the analyst industry. The paper is only in German, so I thought I’d attempt a translation of the paper, by Dr. Andreas Stiehler.
Of course, also look at our posts on statistics , biased samples and megamistakes.
–oo00oo–
Hunger for numbers is substantial […]
How independent are independent analysts?
Analyst relations is a niche activity. That encourages analysts relations managers to look to other communications areas to learn from and co-operate with. One of these is investor relations, which has benefitted from the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary publishing transcripts of a day hearing from experts on the relative independence of analysts from […]
10Mar2007 | Editorial | 2 comments | ContinuedEast Europe and Middle East are 2007’s tech hotspots
The Forrester (FORR) 2007 IT Spending Forecasts are out. Considering this week’s fall in stock on the Nasdaq, our post titled Preparing for a US slowdown, linked to growth elsewhere also stresses the need for vendors to look widely.
Forrester’s analysis concludes that the region with the highest growth will be EMEA (which Forrester defines as […]
East Europe and Middle East are 2007’s tech hotspots
The Forrester (FORR) 2007 IT Spending Forecasts are out. Considering this week’s fall in stock on the Nasdaq, our post titled Preparing for a US slowdown, linked to growth elsewhere also stresses the need for vendors to look widely.
Forrester’s analysis concludes that the region with the highest growth will be EMEA (which Forrester defines as […]
More fiction from influencer50?
This month’s issue of The Marketer includes an article which claims that analyst influence is falling. Influencer50’s Duncan Brown has the byline on the article, which unsurprisingly includes no detail to support the claim.
As we commented in October, while this claim is bound to get headlines influencer50 doesn’t seem to have any research that […]
Ward-Dutton and Chapple to discuss open source analysis
The open source approach to industry analysis is an interesting approach to exploiting the power of the internet to analyse a product/vendor. Recently, a number of leading figures in the analyst industry have come together to produce a wiki guide to open source analysts.
At its core of those firms’ mission is the belief that open […]
I think what has changed is not AR but the fact that social media is a mainstream platform for content/opnion ...
Actually, I wrote my own NDA agreement (in my URL). Smaller vendors, as a rule, are fine with it. Multibillion ...
Excellent wise and solid advice as ever Duncan 
Hi Arpit,
The top analyst firm is certainly Gartner [www.gartner.com]. Email us if you have any other questions.
Duncan. 
