Having spent more than a decade in traditional analyst houses before starting a boutique research firm over four years ago, I’ve genuinely seen both sides of the coin when it comes to “pay-to-play” shenanigans with analysts.<\/p>\n
We’ve heard all the accusations of vendors “buying” their positioning in quadrants, waves and marketscapes for years, and I’ll leave it to your own judgement what actually transpires there. \u00a0In anycase, I think most knowledgeable people just use those things as guides when they make decisions.. and do not always take them as gospel. \u00a0Am sure we get the some sniping when we run our Blueprints<\/a>, even though analyst opinion only accounts for 10% of the scoring.<\/p>\n
Essentially, these “independents” make money using three tactics:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
Tactic 1) Pay for Praise:<\/strong> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Tactic 2) Pay to Shut-Up:<\/strong> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Tactic 3) Pay to Attack: \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
The Bottom-line: \u00a0Who can you trust?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
Sadly, this is only going to get worse before it gets any better. \u00a0Suddenly, in today’s media-insane environment, everyone is an expert<\/em> and can put out their own version of the world in many different forms and soundbites, across many different information channels. It must be getting really, really hard for some people to keep track of what is real versus propaganda (or just plain crap). \u00a0I can only hope that better filtering tools are developed in the future that allow us to manage our information environments better, de-social<\/a> some of the insanity that deluges us, and focus on the experts we trust and opinions that matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"