Firms are striving to become future fit to win in an environment of political, economic, competitive, and technology uncertainties. One key trait that differentiates future fit firms from the rest is their willingness to be technology innovators. They rank evaluating and experimenting with emerging technology as a top tech executive priority. In Forrester’s Q3 2020 North American Future Fit Technology Survey of 530 innovation and business leaders, 72% of respondents at leading-edge firms said they are new technology innovators, compared with only 4% of contenders.

In the Forrester Decisions for Technology Executives service, we’re researching exactly how future fit firms build an emerging technology muscle. How do they research an emerging tech, evaluate its potential, and evangelize it internally to drive adoption?

We’ve created a whole body of research dedicated to helping technology leaders from defining their emerging technology vision all the way through outlining a strategy and execution.

The ReCPI For Emerging Tech Success

To help organizations build a comprehensive approach around their emerging technologies practices, we’ve developed a framework called ReCPI (Research, Communicate, Prove, and Integrate). It helps technology leaders develop a consistent, rigorous, and repeatable approach that will drive emerging technology success. What makes ReCPI unique? It:

  • Emphasizes trends over emerging technologies. ​
  • Takes a more expansive view of potential risk and value.​
  • Assesses emerging technology fit in terms of culture, talent, and process.​
  • Separates research and evaluation from commercialization work.

Over the past few months, our coverage has evolved to provide more in-depth insights and research focused on specific challenges that firms face today regarding the evaluation, experimentation, and adoption of emerging technologies. Examples of recent research to help clients get their emerging tech plans into action include:

What’s Coming Next

We’re working to evolve our emerging technology coverage even further. Over the next few months, we plan to provide technology executives with specific guidance around:

  • Proving the business case for emerging technology opportunities. Tech leaders struggle to prove the worth of an investment they plan to make in an emerging tech opportunity, as there are so many unknowns. We’re working on a comprehensive approach to build a business case for an emerging tech opportunity using Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ framework.
  • An emerging technology evaluation toolkit. Firms often ask for our help in selecting the right technology for a business opportunity. The toolkit combines objective and subjective criteria to evaluate the most suitable emerging technology for a given problem.
  • Case studies and industry research. Often, tech leaders ask for our opinion on the hottest emerging trends in their industry. They also wish to learn from the experience of their peers. We plan to provide industry-specific applications of emerging technology and client examples for some key sectors.

There’s a lot of great research underway, and our team can help you apply it in the best possible way. Let us know what else would be helpful to you and your team to evolve your emerging technology capability.