Reading List for January 30, 2008

At Technobabble 2.0 Jonny Bentwood posted Aberdeen Group – guns for hire? as a response to a Wall Street Journal article questioning Aberdeen’s business model. Interesting comments including one from Aberdeen’s CEO.

Barbara and I are debating the coverage of emerging technologies in the Tekrati Keeping Tabs post Gartner is not the only analyst on emerging tech

Phil Fersht, experienced outsourcing analyst who recently joined AMR, posted What outsourcing research does the industry need? to solicit ideas for his research agenda. Good use of social media for community building and research.

Hill and Knowlton has a UK cut of its Influencing Technology Decision Makers survey available for download at Influencing Technology Decision Makers.

In Bloor on Analyst Relations, Analyst Insight’s David Rossiter gives a heads up about Robin Bloor blogging on AR best practices. Good. The more tips and insights the better.

Duncan Chapple on Analyst Equity posts CIOs continue to put research and print before Google about a survey of 300 senior IT decision makers in Germany, the UK and France.

Reading List for January 24, 2008 – Social Media Index, transparency, too cool for school

On my personal blog, Food Notebook, I use to have a regular feature every Wednesday that highlighted interesting items from various sources (for example Media Roundup – 8/22/07). I always had lots of content to pull from and it was fun to do. I anticipated doing the something similar here on the SageCircle blog. Alas, there is not that much regular content on the web about the IT analysts and the folks who interact with them. So the “Reading List” will be an irregular feature until more people and publications start creating content about the analysts – hint, hint.

Keep those calls and emails coming… by Bob or John at HP Corporate AR suggesting that analysts who work on emerging technologies proactively call them, because

Forrester’s Charlene Li on 60 Minutes this Sunday, January 13th, to discuss Facebook

Congratulations to Charlene for this plum media opportunity. This is very positive for the social media industry as Charlene is a knowledgeable observer who has a knack for giving the press clear and concise sound bites that educate without sensationalizing the topic at hand. Check out “Facebook (and me) on 60 Minutes” for details. I for one will be recording the show to make sure I don’t miss it.

Hill and Knowlton’s Tech Decision Makers Study

Interesting press release from our friends at H&K on Industry Analysts, Print Media Leading Influencers in IT Decisions. This concerns the nearly annual study H&K commissions to interview (much better and more expensive than a web survey) IT buyers about where they get their information and advice on purchasing decisions.

The Curse of Knowledge

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike is an essay by Janet Rae-Dupree in today’s Sunday New York Times Business section. The first paragraph is what really caught my attention: “It’s a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.” Hmm, I bet we all have come up against this “curse of knowledge” when a top analyst won’t consider something new or a highly experienced colleague won’t consider an innovative AR technique. The essay is well worth reading.