J.P. Gownder

This morning, WIRED published an article about my new Forrester Big Idea report, The Future of Jobs, 2025: Working Side-By-Side With Robots. You're probably familiar by now with the panic-stricken books (like Martin Ford's Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future) and headlines (HBR's What Happens When Robots Replace Workers?) proclaiming that […]

I've just released a major new report on Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented And Virtual Reality Should Be Part Of The Innovator's Toolkit. My research finds that it's time to give AR and VR their due consideration when solving business problems involving either workers or for customer interactions. AR and VR technologies […]

Tablets, once the darling of the consumer electronics industry, have hit hard times — if you measure by shipments and sales. While the installed user base continues to grow — Forrester forecasts that 580 million people will be using tablets globally by the end of 2015 — shipment numbers have been disappointing, even looking at […]

You've probably heard about the Quantified Self (QS), a movement that aims to capture, analyze, and act upon data from the human body in the interest of better health, fitter athletes, and sharper minds. Today, QS is giving way to QW — Quantified Workforce. A variety of technologies — devices, software, services — can quantify […]

It’s not often that a new product release has the potential to reshape the way people work and play. The PC, the browser, the smartphone – all of these products fell into that category. Microsoft’s new HoloLens has the potential to do the same. (Check out some photos from Gizmodo here — they don't live […]

This weekend, I’ll be heading off to Las Vegas for the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Infrastructure & Operations leaders should – and do – keep tabs on the news coming out of CES. In this era of consumerization, bring-your-own (BYO) technology, and Shadow IT, CES announcements affect the I&O role more than ever before. […]

We're living in a time when smart, connected devices — tablets, smartphones, wearable devices, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the like — are being woven into the Business Technology (BT) Agenda of most companies. Nowhere is this trend more intimately applied to the customer experience than in healthcare, where devices near our bodies, on […]

In 2015, wearables will hit mass market: With Apple’s much-anticipated Apple Watch slated for release early next year, the already hype-heavy conversation will reach new heights. My colleague Anjali Lai wrote a report analyzing the true addressable market of Apple Watch from a quantitative and qualitative data perspective – covered right here on the Data Digest – to […]

My colleagues Sophia Vargas, Michael Yamnitsky, and I have just published a new Quick Take report, "HP Announces Innovative Tools That Will Bridge Physical And Digital Worlds." Sophia and Michael have written about 3D printing for CIOs previously, and all three of us are interested in how computing and printing technologies can inform the BT Agenda of […]

In a new report, we lay out how I&O leaders can leverage wearables as a source of customer-centric innovation as they build their BT Agenda. As we have written, today the I&O role is changing, as business imperatives now shape technology choices and I&O pros are judged on business outcomes. You can only add value and […]

Tomorrow, Apple will reportedly unveil its wearable device, widely dubbed "iWatch" (though we don't yet know for certain what Apple will actually call the device). I'll be at the event in person along with a number of Forrester analysts. In advance of the event, my colleague James McQuivey and I have released two new reports […]

Today Salesforce.com offered a formal update on its Salesforce Wear offering (which I wrote about at its release here). Salesforce Wear is a set of developer tools and reference applications that allows enterprises to create applications for an array of wearable devices and link them to Salesforce1, a cloud based platform that connects customers with […]

Too many wearables today have screens that look like miniaturized smartphones. Just as smartphones shouldn’t be PC screens shrunk down to a 4-5” screen, smartwatches shouldn’t look like smartphones shrunk to 1”. Nor is it a matter of responsive web design (RWD), which resizes web content to fit the screen. Samsung's Gear 2 looks like […]

Wearables are opening up exciting new scenarios for consumers and enterprise users alike, but the wider conversation on wearables has taken a privacy-oriented turn. The New York Times and WIRED, among others, have covered the emerging privacy concerns associated with wearable devices. Particular ire has developed against Google Glass. An online activist group, Stop the Cyborgs, […]

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on Hilton’s plans to invest $550 million in technology solutions that will empower guests to use “smartphones to choose rooms, check in and even unlock doors.” From the customer’s perspective, such a system – if implemented properly – solves a number of problems: Ensuring the best available […]

Since the original release of Windows 8 on October 26, 2012, the operating system has benefitted from two major updates — Windows 8.1 (in October, 2013) and the Update to Windows 8.1 (in April, 2014). With these updates, Microsoft sought to address a variety of user concerns and feedback, including some major revisions to the user […]

On June 10, Salesforce.com announced Salesforce Wear, a bundle of free tools and reference applications aimed at evangelizing the power of enterprise wearables. The offering supports six different wearable devices, each with its own open-source reference application to help developers design and build wearable apps that connect to the Salesforce1 platform. Salesforce Wear has the […]

Yesterday, Microsoft released the Surface Pro 3, a 12" touchscreen device billed as "the tablet that can replace your laptop." Sporting some hard-core computing bona fides (including Intel processors and Windows 8.1) and new innovations (like an active stylus that activates note-taking outside of the lock screen), the device in its third generation offers a […]

Google recently announced an expansion of its Explorer Edition program to anyone in the U.S. — still at $1,500. This doesn't constitute the mass market release of the product; it's an incremental move to extend its beta program. I believe the move mostly benefits enterprise customers of the device — continuing Forrester's research call that […]