Comments on: On Jon Udell, freedom, talent management and the New Patronage economy

By: The Creation of Value

The Creation of Value — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:56:19 +0000

[...] had the pleasure of getting referred to an article from James Governor discussing the merits of a patronage economy this morning by Hugh Macleod (who is also referred to [...]

By: Mark Essel

Mark Essel — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:50:40 +0000

This is a beautiful essay on value creation, and speaks directly to a topic very dear to me. I had problems visiting a couple of links (I enjoy digging through all linked information) in particular the link to Hugh’s site and Blake on Google.

Look forward to your continued thoughts on this dynamic area. If you’d like to see some of my ideas, please scan through my blog/tags cloud.

By: Chris Bird

Chris Bird — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:00:29 +0000

There is so much in this excellent piece that it is hard to know where to start with the comments. I will pull one piece out, though.

“Successful analysis requires synthesis. I am not saying that all specialisation is bad- that would be absurd, but rather we’re going to start aknowledging the value of the generalist again”

I especially like this because it talks to more than just what is going on in this article. For me the innate ability to think conceptually – to have a strong conceptual model of technology is hugely important. I hire people like that because they can apply that model regardless of the problem space. There is after all one basic problem in distributed data. “When I have two values that purport to be the same, when do thjey actually have to be the same? Instantly? Eventually? Ever?”

It doesn’t require a great deal of database specialiazation to ask that. It doesn’t require a great deal of industry (whatever the industry might be) knowledge to ask the question. Understanding and believeing the answer certainly does though. Regardless what data management model we are dealing with, that is still the fundamental issue.

So wjile technologies come and go, technical fads have to be relearned, there are some major elemnts of truth that are specialization free. Make sure you master those.

Oh, by the way these are called patterns – and are in my opinion what we bring to our patrons. These are patterns of thought. That is what our patrons pay us for.

By: James Governor’s Monkchips » From JavaOne to Java 2.0: Java is Dead, Long Live Java

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:47:17 +0000

[...] Because we were pushing the dynamic language agenda forward at a critical time. Sun has now been a patron of dynamic languages on the JVM over the last few years, and RedMonk helped turn that dial. Sun [...]

By: James Governor’s Monkchips » Thoughts on Open Source Analysis: Response to Armadgeddon

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:56:25 +0000

[...] to Linux – does that mean Linus does what they tell him? They may buy some influence, its true. IBM gets the new patronage model pretty well, and increasingly works collaboratively with a range of constituencies, including [...]

By: James Governor’s Monkchips » Working Towards a Formal Supplier-side IP Policy

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:04:46 +0000

[...] that don’t have IP agreements in place that allow collaborative working according to the New Patronage Economy will be at a serious competitive disadvantage against others that do. You see, collaborators, and [...]

By: James Governor’s Monkchips » Why Microsoft Still Needs Another Scoble. More on Don Ferguson.

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:23:21 +0000

[...] Dave Shields recently argued IBMers should blog from their own platform, rather than through developerworks. I can now see a bloody good reason to do just that. IBM seems to not appreciate some facts about the new patronage economy. People don’t want to make contributions you can nuke. They want to work for you but have some small degree of autonomy. Deleting blogs is like editing blogs when nobody is looking. It just smells wrong. Can you imagine if Cote left and we deleted peopleoverprocess? Self-defeating I am sure you’d agree. What if Bobby Woolf joined Microsoft? How much IBM SOA documentation would be lost? [...]

By: tech decentral » links for 2007-01-05

tech decentral » links for 2007-01-05 — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 23:32:57 +0000

[...] James Governor’s Monkchips » Blog Archive » On Jon Udell, freedom, talent management and the New Patronage economy destined to be a classic. (tags: open-source-analysis patronage sponsorship business-models) [...]

By: George Goodall

George Goodall — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:04:58 +0000

Transparency is certainly a noble goal. However, one threat of full transparency is the imposition of a type of Glass-Steagall between buy-side and sell-side analysts in the larger analyst firms. I wonder how many analysts–particularly on the buy side–are totally aware of what’s going on with the vendor or consulting side of the house. Individual analysts may have no idea of whether or not particular vendors are clients. The glass wall of impartiality could already exist due to the vagaries of sales and marketing.

By: jgovernor

jgovernor — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:11:08 +0000

Great stuff George. thanks for taking the ideas seriously – that is how they were meant- and for the history lesson. I have considered the Enderle issue. One opportunity is to be sponsored by two houses-the Medicis and The Borgias…

seriously though- I think I am describing something I see in action, rather than saying how i would like the world to be.

Also – everyone knew who Galileo’s patrons. it when the patronage is a secret that real problems arise. transparency is a requirement for the new patronage.

Also – Enderle’s flaying is something that could be applied to any analyst firm. I think its impossible to 100% remove conflicts of interest, even if your clients are pure sell or buy side. However these conflicts can be managed and ameliorated – through transparency, for one.

But somewhere along the line someone is always paying the piper.