After taking a look at a blog entry (posted a year ago to this day) on ARmadgeddon titled "Reviewing Gartner Top Predictions - Who will step up?" and checking out an analysis of a Gartner prediction from 2005, I was reminded of the inherently slippery slope that is the art of accurately forecasting future events. As much (or as little) experience as any analyst, pundit, industry watcher, etc. might have, or otherwise claim to have, looking ahead is just plain hard to do. Since there is most likely a comparative minority who disagree that seeing into the future isn't an exact science or rationally driven pursuit, the answer to the question of why analyst firms feel the need to attempt doing so remains beyond me.
That being said, I think the concept of predictive markets offers a viable alternative to that of "expert opinion" in terms of what might transpire going forward. Granted experts tend to have more data and information on hand than the average person, but in today's networked economy operating within the framework of the information age, access to such is becoming less and less a barrier. For this reason it is plausible that the wisdom of crowds can trump the dangers/drawbacks of group-think and produce better forward facing analysis.
The potential for predictive markets topping traditional expert prediction would be significantly higher if the participants already have domain knowledge about the subject area. However, it can take a significant time and resource investment to gather appropriate groups of persons who are actually knowledgeable enough...so it typically remains unrealistic to expect the same comparative results that would stem from such. Yet, in terms of open source communities there is the opportunity to leverage the concentrations of individuals who all share some sense of common knowledge, by introducing the use of predictive markets as a tool for generating a depiction of future circumstance.
By utilizing predictive markets within the milieu of open source communities the opportunity to better chart and strategy and adjust roadmaps would immediate present itself. Also, if all else failed the results could be instrumental in gaining a better pulse of the expected course of an open source software operation (project or company). At that point, those who are most closely involved with its day-to-day dynamics might prove to be most qualified to predict related occurrences. Whatever the case, it's hard to ignore the direct parallels between the nature of predictive markets and that of open source communities as well as the latent potential for their association. Perhaps we'll witness more investigation in this arena towards proving its cogency...
About the blogger: Alex Fletcher is lead industry analyst at Entiva Group Incorporated, a research and analyst firm which concentrates exclusively on the open source software industry. His main focus is working to help clients of all sizes formulate strategy and policy surrounding their use of open source software within the enterprise. Alex has prior experience as a consultant, software engineer and start-up founder. He can be reached at alex dot fletcher -at- entivagroup dot com.
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