Gartner’s ‘hype cycle’ applied to the business of sustainability in 2024
A look at the maturity and adoption of sustainable business today. Read More
In July, Gartner, the tech research and consulting firm, published one of its infamous “hype cycles,” this one zeroing in on the world of sustainability.
Hype cycles, if you’re unfamiliar, are Gartner’s assessments of technological trends. Introduced in 1995, they plot technologies along a horizontal, roller coaster-like curve, from their inception all the way through their maturity and commoditization. Each vector of the curve represents a phase of maturity, starting with a “Technology Trigger” before climbing to a “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” crashing into a “Trough of Disillusionment,” then rising again along a “Slope of Enlightenment” and — at long last — leveling off on a “Plateau of Productivity,” the point at which a technology has profitably reached the mainstream. (You can read more about each of the five stages here.)
As with any subjective analysis, there’s no shortage of debate over hype cycles’ accuracy and utility. The internet is chockablock with critiques, including in several academic journals. Among the problems, say critics, is that hype cycles are unscientific, and that the outcome of a given technology does not depend entirely on the nature of the technology itself; there are other influences that determine its trajectory, from economics and politics to market shifts and competition, not to mention bad management.
Still, at minimum, they are an informative and influential visualization of any given technological moment.
Grading sustainability on a curve
Gartner’s “Hype Cycle for Environmental Sustainability” tells a compelling story, not just about what’s hot and what’s not, but about the state of sustainable business overall. It plots the state of three dozen or so technologies and trends, from the seemingly exotic (resource-positive buildings, circular supply chains, net-zero data centers) to the relatively mundane (Scope 3 emissions data, voluntary carbon offsets, life-cycle analysis software).
For me, two things jumped off the page.
First, there is nothing to the right of the “Trough of Disillusionment” — that is, no technology or trend climbing the “Slope of Enlightenment,” where experience and maturity take hold to build enduring markets, let alone the “Plateau of Productivity.” (It should be noted that solar and wind energy and electric vehicles weren’t part of this exercise. They are included in a “Hype Cycle for Low-Carbon Energy Technologies” Gartner published for clients in June.)
What about carbon offsets or carbon accounting software? They’ve been around for years and have been widely deployed alongside the growth of net-zero commitments, science-based targets and other corporate goals. Haven’t they reached some level of maturity?
Not so much, says Gartner.
How to Accelerate Corporate Climate Action With Stream Financing
“Most of the technologies on this hype cycle are still a good two to five years from hitting that ‘Plateau of Productivity,’” Kristin Moyer, a VP and “distinguished analyst” at Gartner, told me. “It’s going to take a while until these technologies get to a more mature productivity phase.”
Second, “sustainable business” itself — yes, not all of the items Gartner plotted are actual technologies — appears on the hype cycle at the very beginning, the “Technology Trigger,” with a projected 10-year journey to the Promised Land on the right side of the graphic. That’s likely curious to anyone who’s been steeped in the profession for years — or decades.
Indeed, I would have surmised that given today’s political pushback, the concomitant pullback of companies’ public profiles on sustainability and the general struggles companies are having in meeting their net-zero and science-based targets — that the “sustainable business” field would currently be wallowing in the “Trough of Disillusionment,” where things “shake out or fail,” as Gartner describes it. After all, “Many companies are reassessing, adjusting and, in some cases, retracting their climate commitments,” according to Bain & Co.’s Visionary CEO’s Guide to Sustainability 2024.
Measuring progress, not just aspirations
So, how could “sustainable business” be seen as just starting out?
“I see what you’re saying about sustainable business being in the trough,” responded Moyer when I pointed this out. She explained that within each cycle are smaller waves that crest and ebb, the latter of which the field may be experiencing now.
Most notably, sustainable business has yet to reach the “Peak of Inflated Expectation” — the high point before the fall.
Moyer explained that Gartner’s assessment is based on companies’ progress, not just aspirations. “We’re looking more at achieving goals, as opposed to organizations simply having goals.” For many companies, achieving those goals is a decade or more away.
The Plateau of Productivity will come when “sustainability is part of every decision that’s being made,” Moyer said — not just within a single company but across sectors and geographies.
So, what might precipitate sustainable business’s nosedive some day, from an inflated peak into disillusionment?
Moyer cited a litany of possible scenarios, such as the failure of climate technologies to scale cost-competitively, regulatory rollbacks and “insufficient government investment and incentives.”
She added: “If a significant number of organizations begin resetting their sustainability goals, this is a signal sustainable business is sliding into the trough.”
Where there’s caution, there’s also opportunity
It may all seem so subjective — one set of analysts’ take on a field in which they are outside observers. And to some extent, that’s true.
But whether you agree with the positioning and rationale of Gartner’s data points, hype cycles represent a consensus about the maturity and trajectory of technologies and trends. They incorporate the anticipated effects of regulation, and how technologies are likely to interact with the emerging worlds of artificial intelligence, the circular economy and decarbonization, among other business and societal forces.
Hype cycles also represent a cautionary tale with a potential upside: On the one hand, to beware of signs of an eventual crash and to be steeled for it, both professionally and institutionally; and, on the other, to understand that “troughs” are often opportunities for innovation and rebirth.
For example, soon after the dot-com crash at the turn of the millennium came “web 2.0,” a wave of innovations that’s been enduring and led to the point where today the World Wide Web is riding along the Plateau of Productivity. The cleantech crash a decade later — spurred in part by the bankruptcy of the U.S.-taxpayer-backed solar innovator Solyndra and the resulting politicalization of solar, wind and related technologies — yielded to succeeding waves of innovations that ultimately brought many of those technologies to scale.
The challenge, of course, is being prepared to turn treacherous moments into opportunities. Indeed, that’s not a bad recipe for any moment, however you label it.
Subscribe to Trellis Briefing
Featured Reports
Accelerating Business Action at COP 16
