Charlene Li

Charlene Li is an influential thought leader and guide on emerging technologies, with a specific focus on social technologies, interactive media, and marketing. She is the co-author of the business best-seller, Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies, published by Harvard Business Press in May 2008. Named "One of the Most Influential Women in Technology" by Fast Company magazine, Charlene is the founder of Altimeter Group which provides speaking and consulting services to organizations looking to understand and thrive in a new economy driven by social media tools and techniques.

Charlene is one of the most frequently quoted industry analysts and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil News Hour, ABC News, CNN, and CNBC. She is also frequently quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Reuters, and The Associated Press. She is a much-sought after public speaker and has presented frequently at top technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo-where she now serves on their Advisory Board, SXSW, and adTech.

Most recently, Charlene was a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. She joined Forrester in 1999, after spending five years in online and newspaper publishing with the San Jose Mercury News and Community Newspaper Company.

She is a graduate of Harvard Business School and received a magna cum laude degree from Harvard College.

• 3. Portals and Search

  The large portal and search sites continue to be key sources of emerging technologies, ranging from better personalization to new ways to conduct search. Topics in this area include:
  ·    The role of "portals" in the consumer experience.
  ·    The "open" strategy of portals like Yahoo! to incorporate more content from other sites.
  ·    The future of search, especailly around personalized, social, and semantic search.
   
  

• 2. The

  Widgets are small, bite-sized applications that can live on a desktop, Web page, or mobile device like the iPhone. The flexible, nimble development of these applications are transforming how consumers are using technology. Charlene believes in the future that the power of developing these small widgets will be placed into hands of consumers themselves.

• 1. Social Technologies

  How companies can use technologies like social networks, blogs, wikis, RSS, and widgets to meet their company goals. Specific topics within this area include:
  ·    How companies can transform themselves to better meet the needs of their customers and employees.
  ·    The future of social networks, especially around the idea, "Social networks will be like air." Included in this are new standards around data portability, Open Social, OAUTH, etc. that will lead to more open, flexible social networks that are under the control of users.
  ·    What drives people to share and participate, and the levels that companies can "pull" to encourage participation.
  ·    The business models and the marketing effectiveness of social media.

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  May 2010

  Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead

  In her new book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, Charlene Li advises leaders how to feel in command in a world where they’re no longer in control. For example, how open, how transparent, how authentic, and how real do you need to be? More importantly, how do you leverage and measure the impact of using social technologies in your organization?

  
  
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  April 2008

  Groundswell

  Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now. When consumers you’ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.