Gideon Isaiah Gartner (Hebrew: גדעון גרטנר; March 13, 1935 – December 12, 2020) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was often referred to as the father of the modern analyst industry. He is best known as the founder of Gartner, Inc. (formerly Gartner Group Inc.) a Stamford, Connecticut, information technology (IT) research and advisory company.
Early life and education Gideon Isaiah Gartner was born on March 13, 1935, in Tel Aviv, to Eastern European Jewish émigrés. His father Abraham was an engineer, while his mother Pnina (née Bedri) was a musician and teacher. In 1938 the family moved to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, where Abraham became a civil engineer for New York City. Gartner attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush and then Midwood High School, graduating in 1952. A gifted musician who excelled at both piano and the French horn, he was offered a musical scholarship to the University of Miami, but was discouraged from pursuing music as a career choice. Instead, Gartner chose to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. He went on to earn his Masters in Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1960. Speaking about his courses at MIT, he is noted to have said that most classes bored him except computer science and programming courses.
Career
Early career Gartner began his career in operations research at System Development Corporation, a subcontractor to Philco Corporation. He worked in Paramus, New Jersey, for the U.S. military's Strategic Air Command control system and then in Alexandria, Virginia, for the Defense Communications Agency. In 1961 Philco sold the first large-scale transistorized computer to Israel’s Ministry of Defense, and sent Gartner, with his background in Hebrew, to help program the computer and to market Philco to other Israel government agencies. While in Israel, Gartner was recruited by International Business Machines (IBM) to lead its Systems Engineering staff serving emerging European and Mideast markets. Gartner rose steadily at IBM, eventually moving to its White Plains, New York, offices to become Manager of Market Information in the Data Processing Division, and a leading figure in the company’s department of commercial analysis. In 1969, Gartner left IBM to form Computer Decisions, a magazine publishing company that documented the latest happenings in the computer industry which marked as his first independent entrepreneurial venture. The new publishing firm struggled in the recession of 1969-70 and was sold to a time-share company which subsequently failed.
Wall Street In 1970, despite having no background in security analysis, Gartner was hired by EF Hutton to cover IBM and the burgeoning computer industry. He thrived at Hutton, and in 1972 joined Oppenheimer and Co. where he forged a national reputation as the top technology watcher on Wall Street. Gartner introduced a series of innovations to the practice of security analysis, some of which foreshadowed the research techniques and marketing theories that would distinguish his later firms. These included chart-and-audiotape programs to deliver his analysis to clients in a more rapid and digestible manner than was customary; “chunking” lengthy research into shorter pieces with bottom-line emphasis, bridging the gap between the massive generalizations at most brokerage houses and the heavy technological data put out by market research firms; and distributing to clients a relentless flow of ancillary content in the form of daily short-takes and advice that became known as “sunflowers.” Gartner also developed a reputation for going against the grain and accurately predicting computer trends and stock movements, with Stock Market Innovators, an industry trade paper, noting that “a remarkable number of his long-term forecasts have proven prophetic.” Some of these forecasts extended to developments that would come to pass after his time as an active analyst had ended, as when Gartner described in highly specific terms the capabilities, features, and challenges of what would become mass-produced personal computers. Gartner was voted the top individual technology analyst on Wall Street every year from 1972 through 1977 in Institutional Investor Magazine’s annual poll of major banks, funds and other institutional investing firms. In the 1977 joint exhibit sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Goldman Sachs, and the Boston Computer Museum, documented in the book “Wizards and Their Wonders: Portraits in Computing”, Gartner was honored as one of the preeminent “Communicator” stars in the IT industry. He rose to VP and head of the Oppenheimer Technology Group, and eventually became a partner.
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