Gartner Hype Cycle Abstract

Hype Cycle for Environmental Sustainability, 2024

Published: 17 July 2024

Summary

Executive leaders are under mounting pressure to meet near-term sustainability targets and comply with emerging sustainability regulations, and are turning to technology and innovation to accelerate progress. However, many of these technologies are still in the early stages of maturity.

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What You Need to Know

Thetechnologies and capabilities to support enterprise sustainability are going through rapid innovation — making them more robust and capable of delivering value, which improves rates of adoption. However, rising energy demands, driven by new technology such as generative AI, risk destabilizing or offsetting these gains. The pace of innovation is driven by three factors.

  • Better ability to support regulatory requirements: Executive leaders are responding to increasingly complex sustainability requirements by relying on technology and innovation. Increased requirements are being driven by regulations such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the U.S. SEC rules

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Analysts:

Shanna Grafeld,  Kristin Moyer,  Lillian Oyen-Ustad,  Gunjita Mundeja,  Sarah Watt

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Gartner Hype Cycle: Understanding the pitfalls and opportunities of innovations

How does a Gartner Hype Cycle™ report work?

A Gartner Hype Cycle provides an objective map that helps you understand the real risks and opportunities of innovation, so you can avoid adopting something too early, giving up too soon, adopting too late or hanging on too long. Every Hype Cycle includes five phases:

The Innovation Trigger starts when an event, like a technological breakthrough or a product launch, gets people talking.

The Peak of Inflated Expectations is when product usage increases, but there’s still more hype than proof that the innovation can deliver what you need.

The Trough of Disillusionment happens when the original excitement wears off and early adopters report performance issues and low ROI.

The Slope of Enlightenment occurs when early adopters see initial benefits and others start to understand how to adapt the innovation to their organizations.

The Plateau of Productivity marks the point at which more users see real-world benefits and the innovation goes mainstream.

The Hype Cycle is more than just a diagram. You also get:
Evidence-backed insights

Hype Cycles tap into deep research, surveys and conversations with technology suppliers and Gartner clients.

An analysis of objective and value

The y-axis measures expectations. The x-axis relates them to the proven value of that innovation over time.

A long-term view

It often takes between three and five years for an innovation to move through the Hype Cycle, but some fall off along the way.

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