Breaking news – Gartenberg joins Altimeter Group (aka The Magnificent Seven)
The Galactico’s grow by one – or for the non-European’s amongst you, the superstars have added another superstar (Michael Gartenberg) to their impressive line-up.
If there was any doubt that Altimeter Group were hitting way above their weight then this new addition again proves that as a firm they firmly believe that people hire the individual. With Michael they bring in a guru in the space of personal and mobile technologies and how these technologies are changing the consumer experience (as well as being ex-Gartner and ex-Jupiter).
According to Charlene Li, all the team will extensively be collaborating with Michael because:
Understanding how people use devices to connect with content and each other is an important linchpin in creating strategies around emerging technologies for our clients.
Therefore the Magnificent Seven will work with him on the following areas:
- Jeremiah Owyang is focused on location-based and mobile marketing issues
- Ray Wang will explore how enterprise apps can better develop and leverage mobile extensions.
- Lora Cecere will collaborate on new innovations such as demand sensing via devices
- Deb Schultz will improve the Altimeter Labs experience with all the latest gadgets.
- Charlene Li will explore how consumer electronics will change how we interact.
- Alan Webber – the press release didn’t mention how he would work with Michael but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.
Charlene’s hiring strategy seems to be two-fold.
- Hire the best people in the market who have a great reputation
- Hire the people who complement the way the market is going.
Backing the latter point up, Charlene explained:
We’re on the cusp of the next wave of innovation, which will be centered on contextually aware behaviors and data – if only we can properly address sticky issues like privacy.
What does this mean?
Simply put, even though I have had many arguements as to whether they are an analyst house or not, in my opinion this group of IT advisors pack a serious punch and a vendor would be foolish not to interact with them and a buyer equallly idiotic not to pay attention to what they say,
Filed under: analyst relations | 9 Comments
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Technobabble 2.0 
Thanks Jonny, In terms of working with Alan, mobile tech is critical for government institutions preparing, anticipating, and managing crises, as well as for post-recovery builds.
We’ve seen all these needs first hand in recent catastrophes, however, it’s not limited to crises alone. With the current administration’s heavy focus on social media for campaigning and driving current programs, we expect to see even more investment in the mobile space, a natural extension to social technologies with the two on a major intersection. The result, we’re anticipating the needs for government, state, and local agencies will need to prepare for this sea change and I’m looking forward to working with Alan on these issues.
Thanks for the update Johny my take on this news – I find that as the big get bigger Gartner, Datamonitor etc… we have the exciting evolution of the independents RedMonk, CCS and of course now Altimeter – the good news for us AR folk is we need to really get our heads round exactly how the new boys influence (BTW no insunation that the Altimeter team are inexperienced I am just talking of company age !!!).
Having read the recent Forrester blog debate with great interest I think the social media platform has definitely acted as a catalyst for the creation of the nimbel, social media savvy influencer firm in a very dramatic way.
In terms of who is an analyst and who is not I’ll continue to take the influencer approach: do or don’t they influence customer purchasing/decision making and market thinking. Irrespective of what they do/don’t sell. So Altimeter is on my AR list and I look forward to meeting the folks when they are in Europe.
PS note the new blog site: http://marcduke.wordpress.com/
But will these galactico’s be like Real Madrid’s?
ie less than the sum of their parts and perennially underperforming vs organisations that play as a team, rather than a collection of star individuals?