I recently wrote a post about "eBusiness professionals edging closer and closer to the C-Suite. It's happening across many organizations and has a lot of implications — from eBusiness pros needing to understand stores and branches better to more critically eyeing partnerships and competitors that can help or inhibit growth. No conversation about partnerships or digital disruption would be complete without a discussion of the tech titans and the platforms driving key trends like social and mobile. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple… every eBusiness professional we speak with has to have a strategy for working with at least one, if not all, of these firms. The language we hear from folks about these relationships is colorful, including "Deal with the devil," "frenemy," "necessary evil," and so on. Everyone has something to say about digital disruption and how to best harness it, so we decided to put those people on our stage at our upcoming eBusiness Forum and let them have at it!  

The eBusiness Forum (formerly Forrester's Consumer Forum) will be in Chicago on October 25th and 26th. I promise it'll be an engaging event, with Forrester keynotes and mainstage presentations from superstars James McQuivey, Bill Doyle, Sucharita Mulpuru, and Brian Walker. We're bringing in speakers from Discover, Citi, Newell-Rubbermaid and more to debate the role that the tech titans play in eBusiness and how firms can become digital disruptors, versus becoming disrupted right out of business. On the heels of the debate around our research on Amazon.com, I'm looking forward to hearing opposing and thoughtful perspectives on how eBusiness and marketing professionals should approach working with big tech platforms and what the future holds. Join us! Register here.