I am excited to announce that after more than two decades as an executive and leader in digital marketing, eCommerce, social media marketing, and business technology, I have joined Forrester as a Vice President, Principal Analyst serving CMOs. One of the main reasons I decided to join Forrester was that I had been a client for more than nine years and had great experiences using Forrester reports and analyst interactions to achieve my business goals and objectives at Newell Rubbermaid and US Department of the Treasury, IRS. My relationship with Forrester goes even further back, as I briefed Forrester on my Intel and Dell products and technologies back in the 1990s. Also, it turned out that I knew more people at Forrester than any other firm . . . so as the old saying goes, I liked and respected the company so much as a client that I decided to join.

Another reason I joined Forrester, and the most important one, is to help CMOs and senior marketing executives solve problems in marketing to today’s consumers. In a world of digital disruption, ultra-connected consumers, and an ever-evolving customer life cycle, the challenge and complexity of marketing to consumers has never been greater. I believe that to overcome these challenges, CMOs are going to have to accelerate their innovation efforts and become digital disruptors in their target markets to succeed.

With that in mind, here are some questions I will be working on as I research CMO-led marketing innovation:

1. How do CMOs define marketing innovation, and what role are they playing in driving it?
2. How do CMOs drive innovation in different organizational cultures, ranging from experimental to risk-averse?
3. What models, processes, and frameworks are CMOs using to drive marketing innovation?
4. What are CMOs budgeting for innovation now, and how much do they expect to grow their innovation budget in the future?

Earlier this week I caught up with Discover’s Mike Boush to talk about his keynote at the upcoming eBusiness Forum, where he’ll explore innovations in eBusiness at Discover. Here’s a snippet of our conversation, and a sneak peak of Mike’s session at the event:

Q: What digital initiative have you undertaken in the last 12 months that you're most excited about?

A: I love what we're doing with partnerships online. It's creating a whole lot of value for customers and, frankly, getting us out of the "must be built at Discover" mentality. It started with an integration with PayPal in order to deliver peer-to-peer payment services. The program leverages PayPal’s huge delivery platform, and customers love it. Then we introduced an integration with Amazon that lets customers pay for their Amazon.com purchases with the cash they earned through our Cashback Bonus rewards program. This really highlights the difference between competitors' "points" programs and our straightforward cash, and the transparency shows just how great our program is. And recently, Google announced our integration of Discover card enrollment into the Google Wallet from our website, which is convenient for customers and helps position us in the mobile payments space. These integrations are just a sample of what we've done, but they become powerful illustration of what we can do when we team up and innovate with other great companies. 

Q: What gets in the way of delivering the right experience to your customers?

Mao Zedong is quoted as having said that: “A revolution is not a dinner party . . . A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

However, history also shows us that violence is not the only way to lead transformational change in a society that is locked into a traditional way of being. Some iconic campaigners for peaceful change, such as Gandhi or Leo Tolstoy, come from relatively privileged backgrounds and were well positioned to take a front seat in leading change. However, others have risen from very humble beginnings. Martin Luther King. Sophie Scholl. Emmeline Pankhurst. All people from ordinary backgrounds who rose to prominence through their single-minded vision of a better world, their ability to communicate their passion, and the courage of their convictions in the face of overwhelming opposition to their way of thinking.

So why is this relevant to a blog that’s normally about eBusiness?

Mobile commerce is a HOT topic!

Over the last three months I’ve presented at 4 different European events on the subject of Mobile Commerce in retail, and in every other speech I’m called on to do, mobile is increasingly at the heart of what I talk about when I discuss the key trends impacting European eCommerce. Its unavoidable.

So I’m delighted to say that Forrester has launched its first European Mobile Commerce forecast.

The growth assumptions are based on the existing Forrester Research Online Retail Forecast, 2011 To 2016 (Western Europe), with simplified category groupings to reflect mobile characteristics. Mobile purchasing behavior and mobile Technographics sophistication are overlaid onto the country-by-country eCommerce growth forecasts to reflect the way in which mobile commerce will grow differently from online commerce across Europe. What this gives us is a picture of how we believe that mobile commerce will evolve for some of the key European markets.

So what are we forecasting?

·         Mobile Growth Will Be Rapid, But Adoption Will Be Niche For Some Time Yet. Mobile commerce will represent 6.8% of all online eCommerce sales across Europe by 2017 (mobile only – we exclude Tablets from this figure). This is a significant portion of online sales, with the most rapid growth in the south of Europe.