George F. Colony

As founder, chairman, and CEO of Forrester Research, George is one of the most influential thought leaders in the world of business and technology. He is a trusted advisor to executives around the globe, providing context and clarity around the digital disruptions that change the way we live and work.

George founded Forrester in his basement 30 years ago. He, along with many talented and passionate colleagues, has built the company into one of the world’s most successful independent research and advisory firms with locations in more than 30 countries. George personifies the Forrester experience and the company’s values with direct, honest advice. “When I meet with a client, I have one mission,” George has said. “To tell them something they don’t know.”

Throughout his career, George has made provocative, tenacious, and groundbreaking calls about business and technology. These include the birth of client/server computing, the dot-com implosion, the rise of social computing, the transition from IT to BT (business technology), and the extended Internet connecting the physical world of things to the digital world of information. Most recently, he has described the business opportunities presented by the App Internet, the new computing model combining the power of local devices with the scale of the cloud. “As the Web becomes the AM radio of digital, the mobile App Internet will rise,” George has written. “This market will be dominated by two or three ecosystems — semiclosed worlds built on a closely fitting set of apps, phones, tablets, computers, operating systems, and partners.”

George has addressed international audiences in a number of prestigious settings including the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland and Dalian, China; the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference; the SBS Seoul Digital Forum; the United Nations’ “The Net World Order: Bridging the Global Digital Divide” conference; the ICT World Forum @CeBIT; Le Web; Cambridge University; The Commonwealth Club of California, and the Churchill Club. He has also lectured at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

George’s analysis has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, MIT Sloan Management Review, and numerous other media outlets.

You can read George’s latest thinking on his blog, The Counterintuitive CEO, or on Twitter at @gcolony.

George is a graduate of Harvard University.