About


Jacob is the principal and co-founder of Chess Media Group, a management consulting and strategic advisory firm on collaboration.  Chess works with organizations which are looking to leverage emerging technologies and strategies to improve how they work and do business with their employees, partners, or customers (which you may have seen referred to as enterprise 2.0, social crm, or social business).   Jacob leads strategy at Chess Media Group and provides the vision for how companies can achieve the greatest business value from their collaborationinitiatives. Jacob also develops partnerships, business opportunities, and focuses on long term growth and strategy for Chess Media Group.

Jacob is the author of “The Collaborative Organization” which is the first strategic guide for executives and decision makers seeking to deploy emerging technologies and strategies in the workplace (published by McGraw Hill, due out July 2012).  The book has been endorsed by top executives such as the former CIO of the USA, CMO of SAP, CIO of ManpowerGroup, CMO of Dell, CEO of Unisys, CEO of Geneys (and former EVP of Alcatel Lucent), Co-founder of Salesforce, SVP at SAP, founder of Craigslist, CEO at AVG, SVP of Wells-Fargo, the chairman of the MIT Sloan Review and several others.

Jacob’s is also the co-author of Twittfaced – Your Toolkit for Understanding and Maximizing Social Media whic was published in September 2009. Entirely co-authored through online collaboration, the story of how his book came to fruition demonstrates the power of social media and how online communities and collaboration can yield business successes.

Jacob’s blog is ranked among the top 100 most influential marketing blogs in the world by AdAge, and is syndicated by outlets such as: The Social Customer, Social Media Today, Cloud Ave, Forecasting Clouds, Customer Think, The Customer Collective, Social Business One and others.  Jacob is frequently asked to comment on social business by major news outlets and has been featured or interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, KRON 4 (NBC’s San Francisco station), Read Write Web, LCI France (a national TV news network), Search CRM, Technewdaily, Edelman Digital, CMSwire, Mediapost, Marketing Profs, and Zdnet.  Jacob has also been recognized as one of the most influential Enterprise 2.0 bloggers by Cloud Ave

Jacob has worked with brands such as Adobe, Conde Nast, Salesforce, Sandisk, The U.S. Department of State, and Siemens.

Jacob is passionate about travel, people, ideas, and chess (hence the name of the company).  Today he maintains a busy schedule of speaking and consulting on the topic of collaboration.  If you are a fellow traveler you can find out more about his travels and experiences by visiting the travel section of this blog.  If you’re looking a speaker for your next event then please visit Jacob’s speaking page.