About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Ted serves CIOs. He has 24 years of experience in the technology industry, focusing on the effects of disruptive technologies on the workforce and workforce productivity. His research focuses on workforce technologies and the programs that support them, including smartphones, tablets, and their impact on productivity; social business and collaboration tools; cloud email and collaboration tools; and the consumerization of IT.
Ted is the co-author of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business (Harvard Business Review Press, September 2010). Social, mobile, video, and cloud Internet services give consumers and business customers more information power than ever before. To win customer trust and business, companies must empower their employees to directly engage with and solve the problems of empowered customers using these same technologies.
It is through this empowered lens that the consumerization of IT makes sense: employees solving customer and business problems using readily available technology that they master first at home — social, mobile, video, and cloud. This management book helps CIOs and IT organizations engage directly with business managers and employees to build an empowered strategy: understanding which employees are workforce "HEROes" — highly empowered and resourceful operatives — implementing empowering collaboration and innovation programs, creating a new empowered security architecture, and supporting HEROes with the right technology platforms.
In 2009, Ted launched Forrester's Workforce Technology Assessment, the industry's first benchmark survey of workforce technology adoption. This quantitative approach helps professionals and the teams they work with have a fact-based conversation about employees' technology adoption and requirements.
Prior to joining Forrester in April 1997, Ted was a cofounder of Phios, an MIT spinoff. Before that, Ted worked for eight years as CTO and director of engineering for a software company serving the healthcare industry. Early in his career, Ted was a singer and bass player for Crash Davenport, a successful Maryland-based rock-and-roll band.
Ted has a master's degree in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds an M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland and a B.A. with honors in physics from Swarthmore College.
Assessment: The Retail eCommerce Playbook
As retail companies evaluate their eCommerce opportunities, establishing a level set of their current strengths and weaknesses is essential. In 2008, Forrester introduced its proprietary eBusiness...
As eCommerce has exploded, eBusiness executives have often looked to various payment forms at checkout as a means of growing their businesses. Alternative payments, or non-card payments, purport to...

Nearly 50% of web shoppers start their research process on Amazon or Google. Over 40% of the world’s Internet traffic constitutes daily visits to Facebook and Google. Twenty-one percent...

As the Facebook IPO nears, all eyes are on the valuation the company will command. The vast majority of that valuation will come from the company’s digital advertising...
The rapid growth and ubiquity of smartphones has led many to conclude that a significant portion of Internet activity, including shopping, will migrate to these mobile devices. To help eBusiness...
Consumers Use Mobile Phones Primarily For In-Store Product Research
Sales remain small on mobile devices, and online retailers are taking a cautious approach to investment in mobile services — for now. In this report, we discuss the size of the US mobile retail...
Multichannel retailers that are looking to compete effectively with aggressive pure-play counterparts that often offer cutthroat pricing or shipping programs will find that the marketplace model is a...

Forrester recently completed the “State Of Retailing Online 2013: Key Metrics And Initiatives” report in conjunction with our friends at Shop.org. It is available on Shop.org (with a...
Ron Johnson, the new CEO of JCPenney, had a dog-and-pony show in New York this morning to discuss the company’s go-forward strategy. The major change: fewer sales and a move toward an...
Forrester partners with Shop.org annually to survey retailers on their attitudes toward and investments in the online retail channel. This year the research specifically probes mobile and tablet...

eCommerce continues to grow at a rapid pace; on average, the retailers surveyed for Forrester and Shop.org's annual The State of Retailing Online study experienced 28% growth in sales in 2012 over...

Strategic Plan: The Retail eCommerce Playbook
One of the questions that organizations launching an eCommerce operation commonly ask is, "Are there common elements behind success?" With a decade of retail eCommerce behind us, we can see that...

As four of the largest and arguably most currently influential technology companies — Google, Amazon.com, Apple, and Facebook — continue to exhibit ambitious tendencies to capture...

Last week, my colleague Brian Walker and I released a lengthy overview of Amazon, its role in retail, and what eBusiness executives need to do to compete with this growing retail force. The...
Forrester partners with Shop.org annually to survey online retail executives on their adoption of various web-related technologies and the investment levels associated with those initiatives. This...

eCommerce Tops $200 Billion In 2011
eCommerce sales continue to grow rapidly, having topped $200 billion in 2011. Forrester expects that online sales will grow from 7% of overall retail sales to close to 9% by 2016. Key drivers of this...

Until a few months ago Bank of America won the “Best In Biting The Hand That Feeds You” Award when it initiated its $5 debit card fee increase. Citibank may have trumped that in...
US Holiday Online Sales To Top $68 Billion
Forrester estimates that US holiday season online retail sales will grow 15% from 2011 to 2012. We expect consumers to show a willingness to spend this season and to use a variety of touchpoints,...

I received a curious email from one of the founders of eBags the other day. In it, he said that by bringing customer service back to the US and away from an offshore vendor, the company actually...
We have just finalized our projections for US eCommerce for 2013 and not surprisingly, the numbers are strong — excluding auctions, we expect that figure to be $262B, 13% higher than the total...
As the online holiday shopping season comes to a close, we’re in the process of pulling together our final thoughts on this season. Last month, we predicted that the season would grow 15%...
As the debate around mandating an online sales tax rages on, Forrester remains convinced that 2012 will see no significant national change to the current tax structure. As stated in my new...
You may have noticed that over the last several months, Forrester analysts have been writing “playbooks,” which are holistic overviews of various aspects of our respective coverage areas....
Consumers are now in control, especially when it comes time to buy. Ubiquitous connectivity allows consumers to easily check prices and buy on the go, which should worry (not terrify) traditional...
In two recent instances in public forums, I’ve heard eBusiness executives talking about some rather disturbing uses of personal data. One was the CTO of a large big-box retailer who raised the...