Is getting better at innovating important to you? Most companies know they need to innovate in their products, services, and customer experience (CX) but struggle to do it well. To find out what they’re doing to overcome that challenge, we surveyed organizations about their business priorities — including specifically whether improving their ability to innovate is a priority.

If it’s a priority where you work, what is your company doing about it? For respondents who told us getting better at innovation is a high or critical priority, we asked what actions they’re taking to achieve that objective. We were especially interested in respondents who also indicated that improving CX and improving their products and services are also among their top business priorities, and we found that the highest-ranked action this cohort reported was “Improve our understanding of customer needs” (36%).

We’re glad it topped the list, because we agree that customer understanding is the most important kind of evidence you need for effective innovation. But that 36% data point left us wondering about the remaining 64% — why are they not taking action to improve their understanding of customer needs? Is it because they already understand them so well? Or is it because they don’t realize how key it is to innovating? Does your company recognize it is?

Join me at Forrester’s CX North America 2021 event, where I’ll be presenting about evidence-based innovation on June 7. I’m inspired by the success of evidence-based medicine in transforming healthcare, which is why I’ve borrowed the phrase “evidence-based” to describe how we can get much better at innovation — by ensuring that we are rooting and validating our innovation efforts in solid evidence, including four types of experience research as well as findings from emerging technology pilots and other key ingredients.

I look forward to connecting with you virtually! You can register for the event here.