Interview transcripts with key actors from seven different industry analyst and analyst relations firms. The aim of this research was to improve our understanding of the nature, influence and limitations of specialist industry analysts within the IT marketplace: The research addressed the following questions: a) What is the role of industry analysts in shaping IT innovation and markets? b) What is the nature of the research and tools produced by industry analysts? To what extent is it possible to construct a 'typology’ that characterises differences between their predictions and assessments in terms of how they are produced and communicated? c) How do analysts acquire, commodify and apply their knowledge? d) What are the limitations to the diffusion of this new form of knowledge? This project looks at the role of specialist forms of management consultants - known as industry analysts or IT research firms. Industry analysts and IT research firms have been increasingly successful in exploiting the uncertainties that exist in technology procurement through generating highly influential assessments of the relative location and standing of individual vendors and the efficiencies of their products. The demand for such advice is large and growing (with the bigger firms spending annually up to £1 million on IT research (Konicki & Gilbert 2001). These assessments have proven to be extremely effective in swaying procurement decisions and influencing vendor product strategies.It is widely acknowledged that organisations find it difficult to critically assess and evaluate large IT solutions prior to purchase. One of the difficulties adopters face is that they are assessing not only technical properties but also 'intangible' issues regarding the future performance of a technology vendor, its behaviour, the differences between competing vendor products, and so on. At the same time, specialist industry analysts and IT research firms have been highly active in exploiting the uncertainties that exist in technology procurement through generating and selling assessments of the relative location and standing of vendors as well as the efficacies of their solutions. Industry analysts are analysed here as 'Promissory Organisations' to reflect the fact they are highly successful in mobilising promise and expectations amongst supplier and user communities. However, the critical social sciences are unable to explain satisfactorily the influence of this kind of knowledge, which has either been ignored or described as 'simplistic' and 'flawed'. To this purpose, the Fellowship will pursue a theoretically informed and empirically grounded programme of work into this important but neglected group of experts, which will move towards a productive understanding of the influence and limitations of industry analysts and IT research firms.

Telephone and face-to-face interviews