Pilot vs. scale: Why sustainability innovation stalls and what to do about it

Corporate sustainability commitments have never been more ambitious, and an unprecedented portfolio of climate technologies, digital tools, and infrastructure innovations designed to help companies decarbonize continues to gain momentum. And yet, progress stalls.

In a recent study, which we wrote about in Harvard Business Review, we found that 85 percent of 75 global firms have held steady or doubled down on sustainability commitments, albeit quietly, while only 13 percent have retrenched. That said, commitments may remain, but corporate ambition is not translating into system-level execution.

To better understand where and why deployment breaks down, we are extending our research, in partnership with the Sustainable Finance Institute, through a broader market-wide study that pairs academic analysis and coalition benchmarking with executive interviews and a newly launched practitioner survey. 

Why ambition doesn’t scale

So far, across nearly 50 executive interviews spanning corporations, investors, solution providers and ecosystem leaders, what we’re seeing suggests this isn’t a finance problem, but rather an execution problem across the innovation-to-deployment lifecycle. What may be required is better connective architecture: shared mechanisms that align capital, procurement, risk and collaboration to make scaling possible. 

For those that work in sustainability, this likely feels familiar. You are asked to deliver transformational outcomes inside systems designed for incremental change. You secure leadership support, launch pilots and build momentum only to encounter friction when it’s time to scale. 

The systemic coordination barriers can be distilled into four key areas:

1. Trillions committed, too little deployed
The strategy is approved, the budget exists and leadership is aligned, but when it’s time to implement, procurement needs precedent, finance wants certainty and risk teams need proof that doesn’t yet exist. No one says “no,” but no one can move, and pilots linger while enterprise adoption stalls.

2. A structural “missing middle“
Between successful pilot and enterprise-wide deployment lies a gap: No shared validation pathways exist, contracting is inconsistent and there’s no coordinated way to de-risk first-of-a-kind adoption. Solutions prove themselves technically but lack the structure required to scale across portfolios, geographies and supply chains.

3. Misaligned risk and incentives
The technologies most capable of delivering transformation often carry uncertainty, and corporate teams are rewarded for performance, not for absorbing volatility. Avoiding risk is rational at the individual level, but collectively it slows the very innovation companies need to meet their goals.

4. Collaboration under pressure
Industry collaborations have historically provided shared learning and experimentation spaces, but political volatility and legal risk are shrinking those safe forums. As trusted coordination mechanisms weaken, fragmentation increases and scaling becomes harder.

Despite differences in geography, sector and role, the underlying message has been remarkably consistent: Ambition is not the constraint. Architecture is.

The systems connecting innovation, risk, procurement and capital were not built for climate-scale deployment, and sustainability practitioners are left navigating that misalignment in real time. 

Tell us what you think

Now we need to hear from the people navigating this friction every day. If you are responsible for delivering sustainability outcomes — whether in strategy, procurement, finance, operations, innovation or investment — your voice is critical to our cross-sector survey to more deeply assess and determine how to act on:

• Where scaling breaks down in practice
• How risk, procurement and capital decisions intersect
• Which barriers are most binding inside organizations
• What structural changes could unlock coordinated action

This is not a theoretical exercise. The objective is to translate lived experience into practical, testable institutional design proposals; mechanisms that can reduce friction, improve coordination and make scaling innovation more achievable.

In future Trellis columns we’ll report on the results of this survey, our broader research examining corporate sustainability and the pilot approaches that come out of it.  Take the survey and help turn ambition into execution.