It’s nearly Independence Day in the US — a day filled with parades, fireworks, family, and, of course, delicious food.

The day honors something that we, like the Founding Fathers before us, hold dear in the research organization at Forrester: the agreed-upon final wording of a document, devised by a team of thinkers, driven by a bold new vision for the future.

While not every Forrester report will alter the course of history like the Declaration of Independence, we always offer up bold new ideas for optimizing your enterprise’s data strategy and insights. From food waste to the disruptions in the business intelligence market, this month’s Insights Beat features new research and ideas to guide a new path for our clients trying to extract value from their data assets.

Stick To Your Founding Principles

The Founding Fathers believed that decency, justice, and morality were fundamental principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and Brandon Purcell followed on this, calling out YouTube’s latest algorithmic blunder, showing that just because a model is working the way it’s programed doesn’t mean it’s working in a morally conducive way. In a nod to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Jennifer Belissent provided a preview of her upcoming research on food technology with a post digging into the landscape of food waste and how to combat it with technology.

(Valley) Forge Ahead With New And Established Technologies

Noel Yuhanna evaluated the database-as-a-service market and found that automation, performance, and security were key differentiators in how database-as-a-service technology is changing the way companies build and support business applications and operational systems. Boris Evelson offered his thoughts on the consolidation of the business intelligence vendor landscape following a series of recent significant acquisitions, and Jennifer Belissent summarized the key takeaways and feedback from her latest webinar, and a guide to navigating Forrester’s research on the data economy.

New data streams such as IoT data and image and video data call for new ways to store, manage, and analyze this data. Noel Yuhanna also collaborated with Michele Goetz on a recently published Now Tech report focused on navigating the complex IoT data management solutions landscape. With the help of these providers, enterprises can deliver a full view of their IoT data and accelerate their IoT initiatives to new heights. Kjell Carlsson published a new report on the top use cases for computer vision — an emerging stream of research for our team. Stay tuned for Kjell’s upcoming New Tech report on the space as well as a New Wave on computer vision coming out this fall.

While there’s no need to declare a revolution in your organization, consider refining and reimagining your approach to data and insights. Check out our latest research, and stay tuned for next month’s Insights Beat. Our team, along with other data and analytics industry leaders, will also be at our Data Strategy & Insights Forum on November 5–6 in Austin, Texas. Join us there to continue the conversation!

(Jeremy Vale and Aldila Yunus cowrote and contributed to this post.)