Software programmers know the pro’s and con’s of forking. It looks as though industry research buyers and publishers need to give forking some serious thought, as well.
Entrepreneurs around the world are using new data harvesting and analysis technologies to combine existing IT industry research findings into new reports and subscription services. These companies publish reports that combine findings from various studies and sources in order to present their own conclusions, summaries or context. That’s why I refer to this process as forking: you end up with new research findings and context. The resulting data is both new and different from the original.
IT World Canada recently highlighted the latest entrant, Infinity Research and its “TechNavio” subscription service. The service blends inhouse data with data aggregated from many sources, including vendor press releases and publicly available summaries of reports from independent IT research firms such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC. Another, more familiar brand name in this space is eMarketer.
Does forked research have a market? Yes, I think so. Many companies buy research with the intent of forking it themselves. Forked research can help companies save time and effort, highlight a specific market condition, or answer a difficult question. After all, the Truth is not always out there.
Just as with forked software, forked research has some downsides. For example, you might pay for research findings that were freely available or you might have no visibility into a survey population.
The annual IT industry research purchasing season is getting underway. I’d suggest taking time now to understand what these value-added aggregators bring to the party. Figure out whether their forked research fits with your existing research sourcing options and spending.
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