In recent years, Forrester’s research teams have been really diving into the role that technology executives play in driving innovation. And that research has shown that companies driving a sustainable approach to innovation grow more than 2.5 times their industry average year over year. That’s why we’ve identified inspiring and innovating through technology as one of the seven top priorities that tech executives should be focused on in their journey to becoming more customer-obsessed.

Let’s take a closer look at how some of those leading firms have been able to make innovation a core part of their DNA.

Current State

To help us understand their recipe for innovation success, we isolated the best practices of leading firms and identified a toolkit that defines a distinct set of competencies and processes that technology executives can use to evolve their innovation skills and programs. This toolkit (which is available to Forrester clients) will help firms:

  • Move from an inside-out innovation approach to a customer-led, outside-in innovation paradigm.
  • Shift from many uncoordinated innovation projects to a coherent and connected innovation strategy.
  • Apply practical execution strategies for every state of maturity and readiness, based on real examples.
  • Define and measure innovation outcomes based on relevant metrics.
  • Create and nurture an innovation culture that drives collaboration and entrepreneurship.

Our innovation coverage is evolving to provide more in-depth insights and research focused on specific execution challenges that firms are facing today with regard to innovation.

For example, some of the research we’ve developed to help clients put their innovation plans into action include:

What’s Coming Next

We are currently working on evolving our innovation coverage even further and over the next few months are planning to provide technology executives specific guidance around:

  • Innovation best practices for various industries. Even though the best practices regarding innovation management are somewhat industry-agnostic, innovation outcomes vary widely depending on the industry, you are in. In order to inspire innovation leaders and provide them with a pulse of what’s going on in their industry, we’ll publish a series of best practice reports focusing on innovation outcomes by industry, e.g. mobility, manufacturing, financial services.
  • How Gen Z will innovate. Gen Z, which will soon enter the workforce as well as late Gen Ys who’ve already entered the workforce, will reshape the way enterprises are innovating. Given how they grew up e.g. with a pervasive internet, cloud computing, digital social interactions, changed individual and societal values, require enterprise leaders learning from these generations to ensure sustained innovation success. We’ll help with our research to prepare for long-term enterprise innovation success.
  • What to expect from innovation service providers? The market for innovation service providers, both boutique firms and global giants is huge. We’ll explore these firms’ capabilities, strengths and weaknesses in an evaluative research to help innovation leaders decide which innovation activities to build on their own, which ones to out-task and outsource, which ones to insource and why.

There is a lot of great research underway, and our team can assist you in applying it in the best possible way. Let us know what else would be helpful to you and your team to evolve your innovation capability.