Americans Feel Miserable. Why Do They Keep Spending?
New research titled “Down But Not Out: Growth Strategies For The Pessimism Economy” reveals why U.S. consumers keep spending despite historically low confidence. Four forces—media amplification of bad news, personal‑finance proximity, polarized spending concentrated among the affluent, and a turn toward emotional indulgence—keep demand alive. The study argues that sentiment no longer predicts pullback, creating a “pessimism economy” where optimism is decoupled from fundamentals. Brands that ignore this split risk misreading market opportunities.
Volatility Isn’t Temporary, Account For It In Your Leadership Playbook Going Forward
Volatility has become the baseline operating environment for B2B leaders, driven by economic uncertainty, geopolitical shocks, AI disruption, and shifting buyer behavior. The latest Forrester research urges executives to adopt ruthless focus, treat change leadership as a core capability, and...
Measure The Business Value Of Data And Analytics Investments
Forrester’s latest report argues that enterprises must adopt repeatable, business‑aligned measurement frameworks to prove the value of data and analytics investments. It cites research showing firms that quantify ROI achieve 2–5× gains in revenue, cost efficiency, and risk reduction. The...
Cyber Risk Ratings Fade Out; Actionable Intelligence Takes The Spotlight
The Forrester Wave™ Q2 2026 shows cyber risk rating platforms losing influence as firms demand actionable intelligence. Vendors are re‑engineering solutions to serve third‑party risk management rather than merely delivering scores. AI capabilities remain nascent, with only a few providers showcasing...
Help Your Partners Help Themselves: Elevate Indirect CX
B2B firms now generate more than half of their revenue through partner channels, yet many lack post‑sale visibility into indirect customer interactions. This blind spot leads to uneven experiences, higher service costs, churn, and missed expansion opportunities. Forrester’s 2026 Partner...
Agentic Prospecting: Seven Reasons The Hype Falls Short
The sales‑tech sector is touting autonomous AI agents that can monitor accounts, detect buying intent, and execute outreach without human input. The article outlines seven reasons why this hype is premature, citing unreliable intent signals, limited automatable tasks, activity‑driven noise,...
What Marketing Leaders Should Not Miss At CX Forum East
The CX Forum East, hosted by Forrester, spotlights how AI is redefining every stage of the B2C consumer journey—from zero‑click discovery to AI‑mediated commerce—while trust erodes faster than ever. The event’s keynote and new Total Experience Score, now augmented with an...
Context Graphs Are A Convergence, Not An Invention
ServiceNow’s new Context Engine has revived talk of “context graphs,” but the idea is not new. For four decades enterprise architecture, APM, process mining and other IT disciplines have been building fragmented graphs of assets, dependencies and workflows. The emerging...
What To Know When Evaluating Sensitive Data Discovery And Classification Solutions
The Forrester Wave™ Q2 2026 evaluates the leading sensitive data discovery and classification solutions, emphasizing accuracy, scalability, and breadth of data‑source coverage. Vendors now claim 95%‑plus detection rates and support cloud, on‑prem, and in‑motion scanning, but buyers must validate performance in...
Customer Success Enters The Agentic Era
Gainsight has launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a framework that lets AI agents pull and act on customer‑success data from Gainsight CS and Staircase AI in a single call. By unifying health scores, usage metrics, sentiment signals and relationship...
Agentic Payments In B2C Commerce: Where We Are Now
Agentic commerce remains in its infancy, with US consumer adoption of AI‑driven checkout staying under 5% and showing little momentum. The protocol arena is split between Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, while Alibaba’s Alipay and the...
When Cyber Insurance Meets Cyber War, Coverage Becomes Conditional
The rise of state‑sponsored cyber attacks, highlighted by Iran’s recent operations, is reshaping cyber‑insurance contracts. Insurers now base payouts on attribution and geopolitical context rather than purely on technical breach details, turning war‑exclusion clauses into decisive triggers. This change forces...
OpenClaw Is Dead — Long Live OpenClaw
Anthropic notified the author that OpenClaw, a Claude‑based personal assistant, would become a metered service, pushing daily costs to $25‑$50. To avoid the expense, the author shifted to OpenRouter, routing calls to the cheaper Kimi 2.5 model, while still retaining Claude...
CISOs Have Plenty Of Work To Do In An AI-Driven Future
AI is reshaping the chief information security officer’s (CISO) mandate from protecting infrastructure to guaranteeing trustworthy AI outcomes. As autonomous agents proliferate across enterprises, traditional security controls can’t scale, prompting regulators to demand documented guardrails and auditable behavior. Forrester’s new...
Banks Are Leaving A Billion-Dollar SMB Segment On The Table
Banks are systematically overlooking a fast‑growing segment of small‑ and medium‑size businesses that generate billions in revenue but lack traditional paperwork. Legacy risk models and 1990s‑era classification codes treat these “new‑economy” SMBs as high‑risk, leading to frequent declines or downgrades....
