Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is treated like gospel in boardrooms from Dubai to Düsseldorf. A single position in that familiar matrix can nudge millions in Martech budgets from one vendor to another. The thing to keep in mind is that the Quadrant doesn’t measure what many buyers think it does. It rewards size, vision, and analyst choreography, and not necessarily real-world usability, implementation speed, or practitioner satisfaction. It reflects power structures, and rarely performance.

This first part in the Rethinking the Quadrant series takes aim at the mechanics behind those polished charts and asks a blunt question:

What kind