Forrester Timeline

40+ Years Of Bold

From humble beginnings to world-leading research firm, Forrester has grown its influence by guiding companies through era-defining shifts. Here’s a look at some of the pivotal moments along our four-decade journey.

2024

January 16

Ramp Up Business Results Through Tech

Forrester introduces its high-performance IT research to help companies drive growth and gain efficiencies by aligning technology capabilities with their unique business needs.

2023

October 18

Izola Debuts

Forrester launches Izola to a select group of Forrester clients. Izola, a generative AI tool that allows users to query Forrester’s research and get a clear, synthesized answer via a simple chat interface, receives its name from Izola Forrester, a pioneer female journalist and founder and CEO George Colony’s grandmother.

July 23

Forresterites Give Back

To celebrate our 40th anniversary, we kick off a worldwide effort to support organizations focused on food insecurity. Hundreds of employees in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific sort, pack, and distribute food, and many contributed funds to those organizations.

June

Generative AI

CEO George Colony issues a clarion call for companies to explore generative AI, predicting its widespread transformational impact. Forrester began writing on the impact of this type of technology years earlier — for instance, through our research on “TuringBots” that will learn to code enterprise applications.

February

Driving Customer-Obsessed Growth

We publish a series of research on building a customer-obsessed growth engine — a perpetual business motion designed to grow revenue, profit, and customer retention. To build this engine, we note, companies must “relentlessly drive internal alignment” and “focus on maximizing customer value.”

January 18

Rewarding Customer Obsession

Forrester announces its inaugural global Customer Obsession Awards to recognize companies and senior executives who center all that they do on customers. The award is given in two categories: Customer-Obsessed Enterprise and Customer-Obsessed Leadership.

2022

October 18

Green Market Revolution

To help business, marketing, and technology leaders capitalize on the historic business opportunity that sustainability presents, we launch our Green Market Revolution research, which we continue to actively build upon.

June 7

Accelerating Digital Excellence

We announce our Forrester Decisions for Digital Business & Strategy research service to help digital leaders create and deliver businesswide digital strategies to boost customer acquisition and profitability.

May 2–4

Return To In-Person Events

B2B Summit North America 2022 brings approximately 2,000 registrants and Forresterites to Austin, Texas. It is our first in-person event since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

April

CX Index Goes To Washington

The White House begins using Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) to publicly evaluate its customer experience efforts. Forrester is the only provider of a tool that captures perceptions of the quality of experiences citizens have with the federal government. The President’s Management Agenda directly references the federal government’s use of the CX Index as a benchmarking tool and tracks its performance on the index.

January

Best Place To Work

For the fifth time in six years, Forrester is honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognizing the Best Places to Work in 2022.

2021

May 4

B2B Revenue Waterfall™

To help B2B companies accelerate revenue growth, we unveil our B2B Revenue Waterfall™ at B2B Summit North America. The B2B Revenue Waterfall is the latest iteration of the highly influential SiriusDecisions Demand Unit Waterfall®, which helped cement the concept of “buying groups” into the B2B collective consciousness.

May 3

Forrester Decisions

We launch our flagship research product portfolio, Forrester Decisions, bringing together bold vision research, tools and frameworks, and hands-on guidance to help clients solve their most pressing business challenges. To celebrate the milestone, Forrester CEO and Chairman George Colony rings the Nasdaq opening bell virtually.

2020

April

Events Go Virtual

Shortly into a global pandemic, we pivot to virtual events, beginning with CX Sydney and followed closely by B2B Summit North America and CX North America. We hold a total of nine successful virtual events in 2020, defying expectations of what’s possible.

2019

January

“The New Forrester”

Forrester joins forces with SiriusDecisions in our largest acquisition to date. The acquisition adds a powerful dimension to our offerings, combining forward-looking research with actionable tools and frameworks to operationalize the insights.

2017

February 24

What It Means

Our flagship podcast, “What It Means,” debuts. The name reflects Forrester’s long tradition of explaining the implications of our research findings for our clients and for society. In our first episode, Vice President James McQuivey discusses the science of emotion and the implications for companies.

2015

November 3

Customer Obsession

Recognizing that “technology and economic forces have changed the world to such a great extent that an obsession with winning, serving, and retaining customers is the only possible response,” we release our report, “The Operating Model For Customer Obsession.” The report, based on an analysis of over 30 companies at various stages in their customer-obsessed transformations, details the fundamental reset of day-to-day operations needed to drive customer obsession. The report has become the bedrock of our customer-obsession guidance to clients.

2014

June

Mobile Mind Shift

To help businesses meet customers’ expectations for immediacy in the mobile era, we publish the book “The Mobile Mind Shift.” It is the latest in a series of Forrester books analyzing the impact of technology and empowered consumers on business.

2011

August 29

Going Green

We move in to our current corporate headquarters, a LEED-Green-certified building at Cambridge Discovery Park. At 190,000 square feet and home to 500 employees, it is a mere two miles, but light-years away, from George Colony’s first basement home office.

June

The Age Of The Customer

Our report “Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer” heralds a new era in business. While previous eras were defined by expertise in manufacturing, distribution, or information, “the new power of customers means that a focus on the customer now matters more than any other strategic imperative,” the report notes.

May

APAC Expansion

The acquisition of Singapore-based Springboard Research bolsters Forrester’s presence in the Asia Pacific region and advances our commitment to serving tech industry leaders.

2010

September

Zero Trust

Our first report on the Zero Trust security model launches. Now an industry standard, the Zero Trust concept centers on the belief that trust is a vulnerability and security must be designed with the mindset, “verify and never trust.”

2008

July

Serving Marketers

The acquisition of JupiterResearch bolsters our offerings for marketing and strategy professionals. Through the acquisition, Forrester gained “some of the most prominent and prolific voices in the analysis of social media and technology’s effects on consumers,” wrote Forrester alum Cliff Condon.

2007

November

Measuring CX

Our first Customer Experience Index (today often shortened to CX Index™) is published. For our first index, we asked nearly 5,000 consumers about their interactions with a range of companies, gauging the usefulness, usability, and enjoyment of those experiences. The index methodology has since evolved; today’s methodology is reflected in the graphic above.

2003

March

Tech Expertise

Forrester acquires the global technology advisory firm Giga Information Group, complementing Forrester’s emerging tech expertise. Employees who came from the acquisition are still with Forrester today.

2002

November

Predicting Offshoring

We foresee a large-scale movement of US services industry jobs to other countries as companies look to lower their costs. Our research brief, headlined “3.3 Million US Services Jobs To Go Offshore,” garners significant media attention — so much so that in 2004, report author John McCarthy revises his projections upward and notes that widespread publicity over the cost savings linked to offshoring may have hastened the trend.

November

Advising Governments

CEO George Colony is invited to the White House to help inform how to set up the IT organization for the newly created US Department of Homeland Security.

July

Catch The Wave

The first Forrester Wave™ appears in the report, “Grading Apps For Inventory And Order Visibility.” The Wave, which guides buyers in their technology purchase options, is a rigorous vendor selection analysis based on a transparent methodology.

Spring

Forecasting The Cloud

Our reports on organic IT offer an early glimpse into cloud computing. They foretell a future in which IT infrastructure is built on cheap, redundant components that share and manage enterprise computing.

2001

September

Trying Times

President and Chief Operating Officer Bill Bluestein dies unexpectedly at age 44, one week before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A former analyst, Bluestein brought an inquisitive, sophisticated, and rigorous approach to research that set an enduring standard. He instilled the belief in analysts that their role was one of great responsibility and privilege. (Hear him speak in the video below.) Each year since his death, Forrester has presented the Bill Bluestein award to an analyst whose work is particularly provocative, courageous, and inspirational.

May

Westward Expansion

Our San Francisco office opens, Forrester’s first US office outside of Cambridge. The location enabled analysts to better serve Silicon Valley and Bay Area internet companies.

San Francisco

January

Business Insights

The launch of Business Technographics® enables us to equip our clients with data-driven insights to understand the changing B2B tech buyer.

2000

Spring

Hands-On Guidance

We launch our consulting practice, the most personalized way clients can apply Forrester’s deep body of research, data-driven insights, and best practices to their business challenges.

April

The Dot-Com Demise

Our report “The Demise Of Dot-Com Retailers” foresees the impending dot-com crash. The report accurately predicts that many dot-coms are in weak positions and that many won’t survive the year.

“Amazon will thrive, but only a handful of dot-coms will survive.”

The Demise Of Dot-Com Retailers

April 2000

February

Secondary Public Offering

We announce a secondary public offering of over 626,000 shares.

1998

September

Kicking Off CX

Our first customer experience (CX) report, “Why Most Websites Fail,” is published. The report, which began with the sentence at right, introduced the first version of Forrester’s website review methodology.

Usability goals are business goals.

April

Going Global

Our first major European office opens in Amsterdam. During 1998, we host six Forrester Forums worldwide, reflecting our growing influence outside of the US.

1997

Summer

Consumer Data

Survey fielding begins for what will be the first Consumer Technographics®. Consumer Technographics is now the longest-running and most comprehensive program examining how consumers consider, buy, and use technology. Only the US Census Bureau surveys more consumer households on technology adoption and attitudes.

May

Hot Growth

Businessweek ranks Forrester number 13 on its “Hot Growth” list. An accompanying headline describes us as “sassy, quirky, and rich.”

1996

November

Going Public

We announce our initial public offering of 2.3 million shares.

1993

Future Vision

Two particularly prescient reports provide a glimpse into the future: “The New Public Internet” predicts that the internet will become a household tool, while “Defining Social Computing” foresees a technology-enabled future in which “people will converse more broadly, electronic ‘communities’ will be created, and text, pictures, and sounds will be woven into conversations.” Soon after, we created a New Media Research group to analyze website operations and new internet-based technologies.

1989

Big Names

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs speak at our annual conference in Boston, signaling Forrester’s growing prominence in the technology space.

1987

Bold Calls

We predict the fall of the mainframe and the rise of PC-based client/server computer systems. Our prescience around client/server computing — which we defined as “desktop computers cooperating with computers known as servers to do a job” — boosted Forrester’s profile and authority as the trend took off in the 1990s.

From The New York Times. © 1994 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Used under license.

1983

First Clients

Air Products and Chemicals and IBM sign on as Forrester’s first clients.

July 7

The Beginning

George Forrester Colony starts his eponymous company in the basement of his home at 20 Cambridge Terrace in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. He initially considered “Wave Associates” as the name for the new company but, persuaded by a friend, chose to go with his middle name.