46 episodes listed below
Research-backed context for business technology leaders.
What It Means turns Forrester research into concise conversations about the forces changing business technology. Episodes connect analyst data with practical implications for marketers, CIOs, sales leaders, security teams, and customer experience decision-makers.
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What It Means is a Forrester podcast that turns analyst research into plainspoken context for business and technology leaders. Its center of gravity is executive decision-making. Episodes move through market signals, survey findings, predictions, and analyst interpretation with a steady emphasis on what leaders should rethink next. The show is especially strong on B2B change. Recent conversations examine how buyers use generative AI, why product experts are gaining influence, and how buying groups have become more complex even as buyers appear more empowered. The result is a practical picture of modern buying: more tools, more sources, more internal voices, and still plenty of friction. AI runs through much of the recent run, but the coverage stays grounded. Analysts separate AI agents from agentic AI, define agentic commerce and payments, and consider how enterprise AI failures create governance work for CIOs. Short-term usefulness matters more than futurist spectacle. The show also follows the operational consequences of new technology, including sales enablement, customer reviews in AI search, content discoverability, and the human skills needed alongside automation. Security and risk enter through topics such as the SolarWinds case and what it means for CISOs. Policy and labor questions appear as well, including H-1B visa changes and technology hiring pressure. The pace is brisk but not breathless. A host usually frames the issue, then analysts explain the research and test common assumptions against data. That structure gives the show a boardroom-ready quality: clear enough for quick intake, detailed enough to inform planning. It also makes the archive useful when older episodes regain relevance around summits, annual predictions, or shifts in buyer behavior. For listeners who live in marketing, technology, product, sales, security, or customer experience leadership, What It Means offers a disciplined way to keep up with changing markets. It is less about hot takes than about decision context. The value is in the translation from research to action.
Made for: Built for executives and senior practitioners in marketing, technology, product, sales, security, and customer experience who need market research translated into operational implications.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge is its analyst bench: episodes pair current business headlines with Forrester research, giving trend coverage a data-driven spine instead of relying on opinion alone.
Each episode of the What It Means podcast features Forrester analysts providing their unique perspective on the latest news and trends impacting marketing, CX, and technology leaders.
Nick Wells tees up a B2B paradox for your next pitch: even the chosen vendor can disappoint.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, grounded look at why B2B buyers still value expert access, free trials, and their own data.
This episode of What It Means returns to B2B buying behavior through a useful correction to an easy assumption. Nick Wells and Forrester's Amy Hayes discuss research that Forrester has built over nearly a decade, now refreshed annually with a larger global respondent base.
A clear, useful diagnosis of why more buyer power has not led to better B2B decisions.
B2B buying now looks less like a clear handoff from seller to buyer and more like a crowded decision room with no one fully in charge. Stephen Casey and Barry Vasudevan give that confusion a useful frame: buyers may have gained power, but not necessarily control.
A brisk, practical look at how security liability and AI are reshaping work and shopping.
Corporate technology risk gets a clear, practical workout as SolarWinds, AI sales tools, and ChatGPT-era shopping sit in the same frame. Nick Wells and Amy Albernaz move from the SEC's case against SolarWinds and its CISO into Peter's questions about whether AI can support sales…
Accounting practice, policy, and software in context.
Host Jack Rhysider narrates true hacking, breach, and privacy stories from the people involved.
David Pierce and Verge staffers cover AI industry news, gadgets, and tech policy weekly.
Long-form interviews on AI coding agents, infrastructure, and security, plus a recurring SED News roundup.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Forrester analyst Lisa Gately discusses how generative AI is changing buyer search behaviors and what B2B marketers must do to adapt.
["Amy Hayes says Forrester's latest B2B buyer research found that 89% of buyers were stalled in a purchase decision, most often because budgets and price did not match.", "Nick Wells frames the conversation around a revisited What It Means archive episode, and Hayes says Forrester has studied business buying behavior for nearly 10 years with more than 18,000 respondents across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.", "Younger buyers now make up 71% of the buyer pool, up from 64% last year, and Hayes says they struggle most with internal consensus and external market shifts.", "The biggest shift in information sources is that product experts from providers now rank first, ahead of free trials, sales reps, and customer service teams, while buying complexity changes the content buyers want."]
["Forrester's What It Means revisits Taming B2B Buying Mayhem, where Nick Wells, Stephen Casey, and Barry Vasudevan break down why B2B buying has gotten harder.", "Barry says almost two thirds of million-dollar-plus purchases involve millennial or Gen Z buyers, and Gen AI is now the second-most important source of buyer information, ahead of customer references.", "Stephen says more than 80% of buyers are dissatisfied with the provider they chose, while Barry says buying groups average 13 people and the process feels like herding cats.", "The pair argue that MQL funnels, cold outreach, and gated content miss the buying network, and they push signal-driven, customer-obsessed value exchange instead."]
Forrester analysts preview an episode covering women in security, holiday shopping trends, and AI agents in content development.
Forrester's "What It Means" podcast ties together the SolarWinds SEC case, AI in B2B sales, and shopping inside answer engines like ChatGPT.
Forrester analysts discuss H-1B visa changes, agentic commerce, and optimizing customer reviews in the age of AI search.
Forrester analysts define AI agents and agentic AI, discussing their current realistic applications and future outlook.
Forrester's Srividya Sridharan and Principal Analyst John Butin discuss how 91% of B2B buyers are using generative AI in their purchasing process, with 97% planning to use it in the next 12 months.
Forrester analysts discuss the long-term impact of AI computing over the next 10-20 years, addressing impatience with ROI and envisioning future changes.
Forrester analysts discuss how the CrowdStrike outage exposed the need for new resilience strategies beyond traditional playbooks.