In our evaluation of innovation consulting services providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps you select the right one for your needs.

Workers outside the day-to-day activities of innovation can sometimes misunderstand it; they see it as something that happens randomly, with uncertain returns and unpredictable risks. Innovation leaders need to ensure their colleagues share a common understanding of the terms and frameworks they follow in their innovation practice. To minimize confusion and stakeholder misalignment, innovation leaders can use this glossary to create a common vocabulary for all participants in the innovation process.

AI will change the CIO role more than the last decade of digital transformation ever did. It will redefine the technology stack and, more importantly, what the CIO must govern and how. As software generates software and autonomous agents execute work, the CIO’s center of gravity shifts from building systems to governing outcomes. Savvy CIOs are already using AI to reshape decisions, influence the C-suite, and claim ground that once belonged to others. Over the next five years, CIOs who treat AI as an operating shift — not pilots — will expand influence and credibility, while those who don’t risk extinction. This report helps CIOs understand AI’s impact on their responsibilities and how to avoid irrelevance.

Predictive AI has been integral to innovation management for a long time in different areas, particularly trend and pattern recognition. Adding other types of AI to the mix creates new opportunities for innovation leaders. GenAI’s creative and agentic orchestration capabilities suggest a smarter, faster, and largely automated innovation lifecycle — one that is moving from promise to reality. While high-innovation, low-regulation industries lead, AI-powered innovation is also being used for highly complex and sensitive use cases. We show how AI reshapes the innovation process, with examples of how companies use it to bring new products to market more quickly and efficiently.

Scaling up innovation capability has become critical to ensure competitiveness in a market that experiences constant technological change. In order to do this, organizations favor technology and customer-centric strategies that boost innovation. Although strategies like team enablement (38%) and process optimization (37%) are also widely used, a clear pattern stands out. Nearly half of respondents (47%) indicate that they invest in emerging technology, while 43% focus on understanding customer needs. This is a snapshot of Forrester’s data on business and technology professionals’ innovation priorities.

Generative AI is transforming the innovation consulting market; it enables new operating models and accelerates the shift from experimentation to large-scale execution. Find out which market dynamics innovation leaders need to pay attention to and how innovation will change in the coming years.

You can use innovation consulting services to establish capabilities for continuous innovation, create outcome-driven innovation strategies, and accelerate time to market. But to realize these benefits, you’ll first have to select from a diverse set of providers that vary by size, type of offering, geography, and business scenario differentiation. Innovation leaders should use this report to understand the value they can expect from an innovation consulting service provider, learn how providers differ, and investigate options based on size and market focus.

The era of blueprint-driven digital transformation is over. Generative AI has ushered in a no-blueprint phase where enterprises must chart their own course — here’s why that matters and the critical actions that you should take.

As part of the research for the Forrester Wave™: Digital Transformation Services, Q3 2025, we interviewed 25 enterprise clients about their transformation journeys and experiences with their digital transformation service providers in a time of significant genAI-induced market changes. Read this report to understand the key insights we identified in these interviews and what they mean for your digital transformation journey.

The enterprise software landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift, moving from a user-centric design philosophy to a worker- and process-centric one. Until now, generations of software focused on creating intuitive interfaces and experiences for end users, enabling them with functional capabilities to accelerate work. The new paradigm centers on digitizing entire business processes and reimagining entire workflows, not just optimizing individual tasks. This report outlines Forrester’s five most important enterprise software predictions for technology leaders in 2026.