by Josh Bernoff Yeah, right. Innovate like Apple. You can do it. Sure. One of the smartest guys I know is James McQuivey, who works with me at Forrester Research. James decided to take a close look at how new breakthrough products actually get created. You know, products like the iPad that make a complete change in people's behavior. Because if you do that, you can make boatloads of money. It's in his report called " Innovating the Adjacent Possible .

by Josh Bernoff At $176 billion last year , eCommerce already represents 8% of US retail. What do you think tablets will do that? Huh? Tablets affect eCommerce? Step back a moment, and let's take a look at some facts and projections, as described by Forrester analysts Sucharita Mulpuru and Sarah Rotman Epps in a piece they just published called " Why Tablet Commerce Will Soon Trump Mobile eCommerce ." Already, 9% of the people who shop online have a tablet.

Behind every great social or mobile application is somebody who built it. In many cases, a big part of that success is a technology vendor or an interactive agency that helped create it. If you're a vendor or agency, the Forrester Groundswell Awards are a good chance to show off your work. Please give it a shot. )Just remember to get your client's permission before you post the entry!( The deadline is August 3. Here's a little video that may help.

by Josh Bernoff I took the green bowtie out of mothballs. 'Cause there are only a few weeks left to enter the Forrester Groundswell Awards . The deadline is August 3. The number of entries is low so far. Competition has been intense in the past. Get to work on your entry - this could be your year to win! See you at the awards presentation.

by Josh Bernoff Mobile hype has reached a feverish level. There appear to be two poles: "You have to do mobile!" and "Mobile is just a fad." But smartphones are certainly no fad. Forrester forecasts 100 million smart phones in the US by the end of 2011; worldwide Google activates 400,000 Android devices a day. What's different here for marketers is not just mobile devices,

by Josh Bernoff Early this morning, the NBA locked out its players in labor dispute. Unlike the NFL's lockout, the basketball players and owners appear to be very far apart, and there's every sign this will be a protracted dispute. This raises a good question: in a highly publicized and polarized negotiation, how should the sides use social tools? Note first that if a negotiation is on a positive track, it's best not to use social tools as a weapon.

by Josh Bernoff You woke up this morning t o the news that Google is once again entering the social space, this time with an offering called Google+. It's not the first time. Google's Orkut social network is a great success - in Brazil. Google Buzz bombed. There was the collaborative system Wave ... we waved goodbye to that. You can almost taste the urgency - Facebook is taking over people's time online and a lot of advertising dollars , and this is a threat to Google.

by Josh Bernoff I've agreed to join our interactive marketing research team for a TweetJam on Tuesday, 27 June at 2PM. The hashtag is #IMChat.  If you're concerned about managing the explosion in new mobile and social platforms - we call it the Splinternet - we'd love to have you join the discussion. Here are some of the questions we'll be discussing: How has the explosition in mobile platforms and social networks created a challenge for you to manage?

By Josh Bernoff I love naming things. I want to get better at it. And I want to share what I've learned so far. The ostensible reason for this post is that there are other budding authors here at Forrester who will need help with this, and I thought the rest of you might also be interested in where names come from as well.  )This post is focused on non-fiction books - I can't help novelists and poets.( Start with some assumptions. Assume that you've got a great idea,

by Josh Bernoff Any book with a degree of success comes out in paperback these days. But when we made the decision to bring out Groundswell in paperback, we didn't want to do an ordinary job. So we didn't. We didn't just add new content, we found new ways to share it. First the content. As we've already described, we've updated Groundswell with two new chapters. One is on Twitter and how to use it to accomplish any of the five groundswell objectives: listening, talking,

When I bought a snack between flights at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, I was intrigued to see this notation at the bottom of the receipt: "BECOME A FAN OF HMSHOST ON FACEBOOK" Has HMS, operator of travel restaurants worldwide, figured out a clever strategy to take advantage of the millions of people who get receipts and keep them for expense reports? If they have, it's a mystery to me. In fact, embedded in this little receipt,

by Josh Bernoff Do you get the idea that things are really different now? Everyone has a different wake up call. Maybe it was the day you heard Amazon is selling more books on Kindle than on paper . When was the last time you talked to a travel agent? Or maybe you realized the world had changed when you whipped out your iPhone in Home Depot and checked the ratings before buying that air conditioner. Disruption is rampant, it's hitting every single industry,

Here it is.

by Josh Bernoff Forrester is publishing a major piece of research, nearly a year in the making - our analysis of the social media maturity of organizations. There are two ways to consume it: if you're a client, read the report Accelerating Your Social Maturity . Or you can get the newly updated paperback edition of Groundswell, which includes this material as a chapter.

by Josh Bernoff Twitter announced it was buying TweetDeck . TweetDeck is popular, sophisticated client software that makes it far easier to see tweetstreams and searches on yoru PC, as well as on other devices like the iPad. While the price was not announced, people like TechCrunch are quoting insiders who say the price was at least $40 million . Ad Age suggests the deal was done to allow Twitter to " Keep control of its own users .

by Josh Bernoff We had this idea in 2007 that we could surface the best, most interesting, most effective social applications with an awards program. At the time, I never realized just what a fascinating variety of programs we'd encounter. So we kept doing it. The purpose of this post is two-fold - to officially announce and open up the site for entries to the 2011 awards, and to celebrate some of the most amazing entries of the last five years. First the facts.

by Josh Bernoff There are a lot of reasons not to make trouble in your job. Do what you boss asks you to do. Be part of the team, do what the company strategy says to do. Go ahead, if that makes you happy. But what if you want something more? What if you really want to make a difference? What if you want to do something different? You could always quit and start your own business. But your company has resources that can help you.

by Josh Bernoff I spend 80% of my time now writing books and giving speeches. As you can imagine, I get a lot of speaking requests. Usually, the prep and the people I work with in organizations are great. But every once in a while - ok, actually more often than that - I'm surprised or disappointed in some of the actions of the people who want to hire me. It's little things. Much like asking for help in an email ,

Next month, my column in Marketing News will recommend that you cut your ad budget by 10% and spend the money on customer service. Why? Because getting your customers to be happy will pay off far more than the advertising investment. You could also put that money into finding and cultivating fans. Both will spread word of mouth, which is more valuable than advertising. Here are three pieces of research - one from Forrester, and two from other companies - that back this up.

by Josh Bernoff As you read in my other post , Paul Heller was displeased with having to pay Avis $13.99 to put fuel into the tank of his rental car, when he had already filled it up. In this post I actually address the question: what should consumers who are the victim of bad service do? This post is a first: my advice for consumers. First decide what you want The first thing any consumer must do is to decide his or her objective. If your objective is to receive compensation,