Human evolution graphic by José-Manuel Benitos, CC3.0. Collage by Valutus.
The current version of ‘trending’ is the video of the guy asking the dude about the thing. Punch up the media analytics, count the clicks, et voilà! It’s trending.
That’s not a trend. It won’t help your business know what your customers and other companies are doing, how they’re viewing issues, or the solutions industry leaders are putting into place over time.
A trend is the “general direction in which a situation is changing or developing.” Ideas, opinions, and innovations evolve, as do the methods for tracking them. Most are mired in media metrics, or 20th-century tracking.
But one method – ours – is E3Evolution™, a better choice for those who need to know which trends sustainability leaders are seeing, what they are saying about them, and any steps they may be taking to address them.
Using proprietary tech, E3Evolution can analyze and categorize thousands of pages of communications, helping companies stay abreast of which issues are growing, and shrinking. One conclusion from the data is that leaders are talking a lot more about a lot more issues than they used to, even as little as 5 years ago. An analysis of what they are saying helps others keep up with what’s most prominent today.
In the graphic above, for example, E3Evolution measured a wide variety of trends by looking at the top 40 sustainability leaders in North America and examining what they talked about in their external communications. This helps companies understand the change in overall expectations and specific issue expectations. In other words, it helps them keep up with what’s most prominent today.
The trends can be tracked over any period – over four years, as in the above graphics, or in detail over a single year, as below. As you can see, some issues have a lot more momentum behind them than others. These are the top movers.
E3Evolution tracks different regions, and the differences between them can be instructive.In Europe, for example, as in the comparison graphic below, trends show a very different arc than those of North America. Trends seem to build momentum more quickly in Europe, with North America having to catch up; but Europe’s trends also peak sooner than North America’s, where trends have a lot more recent momentum. Any company needing to understand the differential between the expectations of different regional customers and regulators will find value in this data.
E3Evolution is updated every six months, which keeps the trend stream both current without clutter.[1]
[1] A 2-year subscription to Valutus’ Stakeholder Science™, which combines stakeholder insight with issue foresight, includes an E3Evolution subscription in addition to
- 4D Materiality™
- 30 in ’30™ Research
- VIEWS™ – Valutus Issues Early Warning System