Empowered

"Empowered delivers insight into one of the most underused opportunities for major marketers—tapping the army of employees and brand fans who put personal faces on corporate giants. As in Groundswell, Empowered serves up practical and tactical advice for making it happen, placing it in the all-too-rare category of business books that don't just tell you what to do but also offer a framework for how to do it."—Abbey Klaassen Executive Editor, Advertising Age

"When Josh talks, big companies listen. Let Josh and Ted show you what more and more companies are figuring out the hard way: the world has changed, forever."—Seth Godin Author, Linchpin

"For years, business books have been telling marketers to empower customers through digital channels. Empowered is even more relevant given today's realities. It gives us the tools to align our marketing strategy with the expectations of our already-empowered customers."—Georges-Edouard Dias Senior Vice President, Digital Business, L'Oreal

"Our personal and business worlds have changed—and Empowered is the blueprint for digital immigrants and natives to successfully participate."—Stephen Gillett Chief Information Officer, General Manager of Digital Ventures, Starbucks Coffee Company

"Customers today insist on innovation. Recognizing this reality, organizations in the twenty-first century must engage and energize creative employees to establish sustainable differentiation and drive results. In this timely book, Bernoff and Schadler provide practical thinking based on dozens of case studies and offer insight on how best to unleash the creative forces within your company."-Shaygan Kheradpir Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Verizon

is your company empowered for success?

You Know It's Happening within your organization. Your people—using low-cost, accessible technology—are connecting with customers and building innovative new solutions. But who are these creative problem solvers? How can you lead them? How can you be one?

We call them HEROes: highly empowered and resourceful operatives. Your company needs them because, in the age of Twitter, iPhones, Facebook, YouTube, and an ever-evolving torrent of Web information, your customers now step up to the counter armed with more data and access than ever before—often overmatching your team.

In Empowered, Forrester's Josh Bernoffco author of the pioneering book Groundswell—and Ted Schadler explain how to transform your company by unleashing the force of HEROes. Like John Bernier and Ben Hedrington at Best Buy, who built an army of twenty-five hundred tweeting employees to reach out to customers online. Or John Stadick, who equipped six hundred sales staffers with iPhones and boosted profits at his construction rental company.

The truth is, a third of your information workers already use commonly available technologies that your company does not sanction. Empowered gives you a prescription for embracing this covert innovation. At the heart of a HERO-powered business is a new pact between these employees, company managers, and IT: HEROes build new solutions to meet customer needs, management sets clear rules while encouraging experimentation, and IT expands its role. to both support and secure these business solutions.

Fueled by data from Forrester Research, Empowered is packed with the business tools and information necessary to move your organization several steps ahead of the competition:

Statistical analysis of the 16 percent of customers who account for 80 percent of online influence

The HERO index: a scorecard of the industries and departments with the most—and the.. fewest—HEROes

The game plan for IT's new role as a key partner in technology empowerment throughout the company

Dozens of case studies and examples from firms in every industry, from retail to business services

With an arsenal of valuable new technologies, your employees are already transforming the way you do business. You can lead them or block them—it's your choice. Empowered will help you make the right decision.