How Industry Analysts Shape the Digital Future, by Neil Pollock and Robin Williams

In order for markets to function, they rely on knowledge and information about products and services and the processes by which these are made. Based on this knowledge, economic actors are able to assign value to these products/services, which is used to mediate their exchange. This is also true for technology products, especially information technologies (IT) used by organisations, which may require substantial investment. How is this knowledge created and by whom? This book explores this fundamental question.

How Industry Analysts Shape the Digital Future is the second book in – what is starting to become – a series by the two authors, in which the analytical focus is shifted from situated analyses of technology implementations (rather common in the STS and IS fields) to studies of the social mechanics of technology markets. In this book, Pollock and Williams provide unique insights into the work, culture, and tools used by Gartner Inc. to predict the future of ITs and assess and classify the vendors producing them. Although industry analysts have been around for quite some time, this book is the first major attempt by social scientists to draw attention to their work practices and their significance. The authors theoretically understand industry analysts as being part of the ‘machineries of knowing’ (Knorr-Cetina 1999) that make IT markets possible, while the central argument of the book has a performativity flavour: Industry analysts do not just describe but also shape IT.

The chapters of the book have a logical sequence and are written in an engaging, easy-to-follow style. The introductory first chapter is followed by a second titled ‘The emergence of a new expert’. Reading through it, the reader might get the impression that the book might disappointingly turn out to be a kind of hagiography of Gideon Gartner, the founder of the Gartner Group; this is not the case, and the following chapters are far more interesting. Chapter 3 is sometimes overly descriptive, but the comparison between the work of industry and academic analysts is an interesting one; it offers an opportunity for academic readers to reflect on their own practices – and possibly to feel a bit jealous of the immediate impact that industry analysts have on their subjects of study. Chapters 4 and 5 are the two main theoretical chapters of the book, providing in-depth discussions on the sociology of professions and sociology of expectations, respectively. Chapters 6 through 9, which present data on Gartner’s work practices and tools, are the book’s primary empirical chapters. Chapter 6 discusses Gartner’s naming interventions, which draw boundaries around technological fields of activity. Chapter 7 presents the ‘magic quadrant’ and the controversy around it as an industry standard that redefines the measures by which technology products and vendors are judged and ranked. Chapter 8 offers an interesting (and somewhat unexpected) view of the significance of Gartner conferences and how those meetings help analysts validate their predictions. Chapter 9 presents data on the socio-materiality of rankings with reference to Gartner’s visualisation techniques and how they shape economic life. Chapter 10 is the most interesting chapter of the book in my opinion, as it is the only chapter that makes reference to other industry analyst firms, theorising the markets for industry analysis as an ‘ecology of knowledge’. Finally, chapter 11 sets out the contribution of the book within the performativity programme and calls for a new sociology of business knowledge.

The authors also claim to make a contribution to the information systems field. This contribution is laid out as an attempt for a more ‘down-to-earth’ theorisation of the IT markets that is rooted in the knowledge, practices, and artefacts of the industry analysts themselves. This argument is convincing; the authors have succeeded in making the study of IT markets more practice-focused. Their call for a sociology of business knowledge echoes the Edinburgh strong programme of the sociology of scientific knowledge, as well as previous work on expertise (Fincham et al. 1994, Williams et al. 1998). This is a noble theoretical cause, but it could have benefited from a conceptual mapping that sorts out the different types of knowledge at play (i.e., business, market, technological, and professional knowledge).

While the authors quite aptly compare industry analysts to other professional groups, such as management consultants, financial analysts, economic forecasters, journalists, and even meteorologists, they hasten to explain that industry analysis is a distinct kind of analysis with a specific culture and practices. Still, the similarities between industry analysts and other groups of knowledge professionals are equally compelling. The similarities between industry analysts and credit rating agencies (CRAs), for example, are quite striking. CRAs have had a similar performative effect in the shaping of capital markets, while their practices have been associated with the 2008 global financial crisis (MacKenzie 2011). Several questions might emerge from these similarities: In what way, for instance, might industry analysts be involved in preparing the tech industry for a similar kind of speculative bubble – one that builds on the hype around Big Data – and subsequent crisis? Do industry analysts see these developments in data science, and its growing popularity, as a new technological field they could shape in ways similar to their other efforts to shape industry, or do they see it as a disruption of their own analysis practices?

What is remarkable about the research in this book is the level of access that the researchers were granted by Gartner Inc. It would have been very helpful had the authors provided insights on how they managed to engage a major global corporation in such an effective way. High levels of engagement, however, seem to come at a price. Although the book title refers to industry analysts more generally, the book, as informative and interesting as it may be, is mainly a case study on Gartner. It definitely delivers on its promise to focus on practices, but I am not so sure that it brings out the interactive aspects of the IT markets to the same extent. In chapter 8, for example, it is clear why the industry conferences are so valuable for Gartner, but it is not clear to me what the audiences attending get out of them. The authors clearly seem to be aware of this heavy focus on Gartner, and for that reason they compensate with a most interesting discussion on the ecosystem of industry analysis in chapter 10.

In the first chapter, the authors admit that they struggled to place the work of industry analysts within a specific literature. After reading the book, I am having the same problem in terms of who to recommend it to, but I mean this as a compliment. The variety of thought and literature on which the authors draw makes this book relevant to a wide range of scholars interested in the study of technology (not just IT) from a social science perspective. The book is deeply rooted within the STS tradition of multi-disciplinarity, and it is one to keep on your desk, not your bookshelf, and go back to from time to time.