Governor, Magic Quadrants and collaborative filtering

Another great post from another Governor: Big Analyst Firms: Are Silos Killing Benefits of Scale?
As usual, there are a few gems within the random thoughts, some are particularly interesting for AR professionals:

• most analysts don't like to read each others research
• this implies knowledge doesn't percolate through big analyst firms

James also quotes Dan Schollers (was a META analyst):

"Scale matters for analysts, because a good portion of what customers ask for is, in effect, a collaborative filtering exercise. As you know, for those filters to be accurate (even one that is mediated by a smart person) they require large scale input, or they are subject to all kinds of strange distortions."

This is a clever way of saying that analysts aggregate end-users interactions into something potentially interesting for technology vendors: "trends".

Back to the quadrants:

"Who builds the magic quadrant - all of Gartner or one specialist? That is not an academic question. Wouldn't it be better, anyway, to aggregate the views of every analyst in the market covering a technology. That way we could provide better data to our customers and consult to that. Perhaps this idea will gain currency through an association. I doubt it though - canvassing at Gartner and Forrester events hardly seems the ideal way to get in touch with a range of analysts..."