The value of the famous computer industry advisory companies is much less than most people think. Take the example of Gartner Group, whose exemplary customer service I discussed elsewhere. Gartner employs some highly knowledgeable, helpful people. Gartner wants you to think is that it's the place to go to find experts. And you can find them there, as I explain here. But as a company, Gartner and its kin are mostly formalized gossip services for big-company IT folks.
The origins of advisory services
Imagine, in pre-Gartner days, groups of IT execs getting together by geography or at industry conferences. They all naturally want to learn what others have done in terms of purchasing gear, because it’s expensive and things change a lot. As they exchange information, it’s clear that some are kind of behind the times, others have made similar choices to everyone else, a few are out there – with new stuff from the usual vendors, or with something new from a new vendor.
Everyone wants to avoid career risk. There’s a strong tendency to reversion to the mean, i.e., doing what most of the others are doing. The tendency is strongest concerning vendors, and after that products within a vendor; e.g. “I always buy GM cars, when I get more money I’ll upgrade to a Caddy.”
Gartner comes along with a deal: you tell me what your choices are and a bunch about your business, and I’ll put everyone’s choices together and feed back to you a better, broader-based version of the results of the networking and gossiping you used to do, so you don’t have to spend the time. Even better, I’ll put it in an authoritative package so that if you’re ever questioned about your choices by non-IT people in your organization, you have our endorsement to fall back on; e.g., “yes we had a disaster, but it happened to everyone who made the best available choice at the time.” What a huge win, and cheap for the value.
For example, here's how they explain their most famous graphic, the "magic quadrant."
What is it? Yes, there's some dressing, but a vendor only gets to the best place, the upper right, if lots and lots of people buy their products. It's little but a graphical illustration of products by popularity.
This is the value they add. All their categories and analysis is just a prettied-up version of what everyone tells them.
The value of advisory services
So who actually listens to Gartner and follows their advice? Exactly the kind of buyers who avoid risk at all cost. They go to Gartner, who tells them what people like them are buying. So they can buy the same thing. And be safe!
If you're running a big-organization IT operation, commercial or government the way most people do, that's exactly what you want. Your operation is, almost by definition, bloated, inefficient, over-the-top expensive and riddled with problems. Saving a few bucks or doing things a little better isn't going to get you promoted. When a disaster strikes, the fact that your decisions were "mainstream" tends to bullet-proof you against recriminations.
In this context, Gartner is indispensable. Your decisions weren't just mainstream; you can point to Gartner -- Gartner says they're excellent decisions. So there!
Advisory services and innovation
What if you run an organization and for some reason are really motivated to innovate? What if you're a hot young tech group building next-generation products and want to find buyers? What is Gartner's role?
It's simple: if you really want to innovate, avoid experts at all cost. Period. Gartner and anyone like them included. Here is lots of detail and a juicy example of why.
The people and organizations who value Gartner are least likely to buy from a 1% market share vendor with a product that’s ahead of the market. Who is most like to buy such a product from such a vendor? Someone who is in big trouble, desperate, or one of those thinks-for-themselves buyers at the front end of the Geoff Moore adoption curve.
How about the small to mid-market? Similar rules. It's true that the buyers mostly don’t know or care about Gartner. Who cares about people who buy giant, expensive systems from HP, IBM, EMC and the rest? They focus on their business, and don’t give a hoot about products and vendors – though someone they’ve heard of would be nice. They’re like homeowners buying a heating/cooling system – mostly they’re buying from the local dealer, who they depend on to sell them something good and then support it. The dealer matters as much as the product. Gideon Gartner can just Giddy-up out of town, he doesn’t matter in this world. But at the same time, the buyers are still mostly failure-avoiding. They don't want innovation. They want works and cheap.
Product Innovation
There aren’t a lot of ways to break in with a new technology product. The ways I’ve seen are pretty much summarized in this blog post, which includes links to further material, including my book on the subject.
The most important concept is simple. 95+% of the market will never buy from you. Ignore them and their gossip-aggregators. The vast majority of the big, Gartner-esque buyers won’t give you the time of day. You need to find some narrow market niche to focus your energy on, and dominate that tiny sub-market. Then you can grow from there.
great information.
Posted by: maryjane | 05/29/2017 at 04:28 AM