I was speaking with a colleague the other day and I remarked about the amount of people covering topics that are significantly oversubscribed. IoT (Internet of Things), AI, cloud, edge, SaaS etc. That is before you get to the endless amount of offshore firms pushing out reports on anything you can imagine.
I suppose one could say that people flow to where the action is but if you are not an early entrant you have to ask yourself, why does the market need another analyst covering that space? What is it that you can offer that isn’t already being provided? Can you offer some particular piece of analysis that hasn’t been thought of? Can you outsegment, outpredict, out analyze or do anything else that someone else isn’t?
Another colleague built a massive data set of machines, materials, outputs, utilization rates and the like. The fact that clients funded the bulk of the development was a bonus. Their direction helped to optimize the data engine in ways that made it impossible for a competing firm to displace them in accounts.