Proctologist or dental surgeon?

An interesting Twitter conversation broke out earlier today when the effervescent open source hand waver aka James Governor drew a comparison between his firm Redmonk and Gartner. I argued the comparison is suprious because they do different things – better to think about proctologists and dental surgeons. He replied with chiropracter and hospital GP.

I prefer my analogy because on reflection, proctology reminds me of the anally retentive practitioner who thinks that all they know is a big secret that can’t be shared. The dental surgeon on the other hand deals with open mouths akin to open source.

The question for practitioners thinking of entering the AccountancyAge Awards for best professional firms is simple: do you share? I’m not one of the judges but for ME, that is a prime requirement for excellence in service.

PS – while this is not directly related to the original Tweet discussion, I believe the overall thought piece works.

PPS – there is no disrespect to Gartner in this. Just a different view of the world.