What It Means

Find out how AI is being used by B2B buyers and healthcare consumers, and get the latest forecast on the impact of AI on US jobs.

Happy New Year! We kick off 2026 by unpacking lessons from 2025 and what they signal for the year ahead. This episode brings together security, marketing, and content leaders’ perspectives so you can act with confidence.

The holiday season is in full swing, and as retailers vie for consumer dollars, some of the biggest ones are branching out to answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. In this episode, we describe what that experience looks like now and what brands should do in response. We also look at the lasting implications of a high-profile legal case for CISOs and the state of AI in B2B sales.

It’s Predictions season here at Forrester. We recently published our 2026 predictions across a variety of business functions, industries, and geographies. In this episode, we take a detailed look at three of our boldest calls for the coming year.

Recently, a very bad day for AWS became everyone else’s very annoying day. And while the disruption was fairly short-lived, there are longer-term lessons to be learned. In this episode, we look at the lessons from the recent AWS outage as well as an overdue step by a social media giant and a reimagining of how we access information on the web.

Principal Analyst Alla Valente breaks down California’s new AI law, VP and Research Director Chris Gardner discusses the impact of AI models on software development roles, and Principal Analyst Nikhil Lai reviews Best Buy’s “in-store takeover” advertising offering.

Heading into the fourth quarter, there are no signs of a slowdown in developments that will keep business and technology leaders on their toes. This episode dives into the latest impacts of geopolitics on the tech industry and AI’s impact on commerce and buying networks.

Are you wondering about the emerging technologies and shifting market dynamics that might shape your strategy for 2026 and beyond? Then this episode is for you. Get a detailed look at how three big shifts could dramatically impact plans and strategies for the year ahead (and get a preview for one of our upcoming 2026 Predictions reports, to boot).

As we move into September, we dig into new sponsorship options for brands and find out how AI agents are impacting the customer success function as well as the industrial manufacturing and supply chain industries.

As we hurtle toward the end of August, it’s time to look toward the future. More specifically, the future of Anthropic (and other AI firms), the future of AI as a technology, and the future of the CMO role.

As the annual budgeting and planning season comes into full swing, we drill down into two unique pricing trends. We then take a detailed look at how to measure developer productivity.

July heats up with a look at the impact of some regulatory moves in the US and a deep dive into a new AI trend for developers that may be more useful than you think.

In this episode of What It Means, we dig into fear as a motivator in the B2B buying process, the human-centric future of digital experiences, and what CISOs need to know coming out of Cisco Live.

From pickleball to nuclear energy, this week’s episode covers a lot of ground. Listen in as Forrester analysts put three recent business headlines into context for sales, marketing, and technology leaders.

If there’s one constant in business today, it’s change. New partnerships, new strategies, and new risks are popping up in all areas. In this episode, we look at three major changes taking place in the B2C, B2B, and enterprise application spaces and tap our analysts for their guidance on how to manage these changes.

In this episode, we look at how to avoid the risks of AI-enabled tools in three common business use cases: coding, marketing, and product design. The key takeaway from all three areas: There’s still a strong need to have a human in the loop to review your AI outputs.

In this episode, we look at how one online retailer is working to minimize the impact of tariffs on its business, provide a review of a major cybersecurity conference, and highlight a new trend in software-as-a-service (SaaS) pricing.

In this episode, we look at a major legal ruling that could shake up the adtech market, some new capabilities to make AI agents even smarter, and a tech industry deal that could breathe new life into a struggling giant.

In this episode, we look at the ongoing fallout from two healthcare data breaches involving Oracle servers and what the on-again, off-again tariffs could mean for CIOs. Then we discuss the rising prominence of social media influencers in the B2B space — and why tapping your own employees could be a smart move.

There are some exciting changes coming to Forrester’s What It Means podcast. Get a sneak preview this week and tune in next week to hear a full episode.