NEWS & ANALYSIS FMJ.CO.UK
CORENET GLOBAL SUMMIT
WHERE DISNEY MEETS CRE
“We’ll keep moving forward,
opening new doors, and
doing new things, because we’re
curious and curiosity keeps leading
us down new paths.” Walt Disney.
Touching down in Orange County,
California – the home of Disneyland –
must have prompted a wry smile from
the 2,000 suited and booted corporate
real estate professionals that had
travelled among excited families dressed
in matching Frozen t-shirts and Mickey
Mouse ears.
As locations go, it felt odd to meander
the sidewalks that liteally lead to
dreams, only to take a le at Convention
Way. Unbeknown to those attending the
North American CoreNet Global Summit
in Anaheim, however, they were in for a
bit of magic and sparkle of their own…
In his inspiring, hilarious and
downright awesome keynote, Duncan
Wardle, creativity consultant and former
head of innovation and creativity at
Disney, encouraged the delegates to
unleash their inner-child.
“The biggest barriers to innovation
are ourselves and the rivers of thinking
we get trapped in,” he said. Wardle
challenged the audience to ask ‘why?’
more, think ‘what if?’ more, be more
curious, brave and, perhaps most
importantly, to take some timeout to
think, to play and to remember what it
feels like to be creative.
10 NOVEMBER 2019
“We’ve all got it in us,” he said,
following an exercise that involved
thousands of CRE leaders pretending to
be sex therapists for honey bees.
In the networking break, the whispers
about how Wardle’s talk prompted
people to think di erently about work,
play and purpose were louder than the
air con that was cranked up to a “Do you
want to build a snowman?” level.
Good ideas can come from surprising
places. That was a theme that united
speakers at the Californian conference.
Take JLL’s David Barnet’s session. Barnet
o ered delegates a crash course in
engagement through experience by
turning to the cra beer industry for
inspiration. Having undergone explosive
growth, the cra beer industry is a great
example of experiential retail. This
parallel sector is at war for consumers,
while corporate occupiers are in the
battleground for talent. Outside of hops
and barley, the ingredients for a perfect
brew (experience-wise) are fivefold:
immersive, meaningful, human, access,
intuitive, personalised.
This potion of sorts can be applied
to real estate strategies in order to
boost engagement. Provide options for
peace and quiet, and for community
connections. Make people feel happy in
their environment. And make them feel
good about the company they work for.
Having worked in both breweries
and CRE teams, Barnet stressed the
importance of embracing values and
showcasing what the organisation
stands for. “Make people feel part of
something because human experience
trumps the charts when it comes to the
potential value add of corporate real
estate,” he said.
This was a tune shared by Leesman.
Peggie Rothe and Racha Kamal’s session
on the employee workplace experience
emphasied the idea that, like the kids
high on sugar in Disney Downtown,
experience is a perception of reality at
that point in time. Rothe and Kamal
stressed that it is the sentiment that
counts because perception is the thing
that dictates whether an experience is
good or bad.
Real estate leaders now have within
their reach the means to transform both
their profession and the organisations
they represent. But this unprecedented
opportunity demands a bold change to
the way the industry measures success.
The Leesman duo suggested that the
answer lies in a powerful new KPI: the
employee experience. By switching focus
and adjusting the measure, real estate
leaders could reclaim lost value and
reinvigorate workplaces as catalysts for
competitive advantage.
“Don’t dial down cost, dial up
experience,” said Rothe, “because
that's the way to maximise CRE
assets, employee engagement and
organisational performance.”
The CoreNet line-up in the land of
Disney would not be complete without
a magic show. The magic in question
involved unravelling the mystery of
how CRE can leverage tech not just to
improve e iency but also completely
change the way the industry operates.
Before walking the audience through
an AI demonstration, CBRE Host o ered
some much-needed context for AI's role
in the workplace. “Think of AI as your
mum,” said Brennan McReynolds of
CBRE 360. “She listens to you, she has
your best interests at heart, she knows
what you need before you do, and she
makes your favourite foods.”
Like our nearest and dearest, AI will
get to know us and our preferences.
In the workplace, it will make spaces
emotionally intelligent. It will earn our
trust. And it will improve e icency by
reducing the number of touchpoints
to get you what you need, or to get you
from A to B.
But it gets better than that. In fact,
the products CBRE Host is piloting
promise to knock your business socks
o . Delegates watched an ‘as live’
demonstration of an engineer based in
one country helping an end user based
in another country. And here’s the rub,
the headsets that create an augmented
reality mean that this end user and the
specialist engineer could walk into the
same room and work together to resolve
the problem, despite the hundreds
or thousands of miles that physically
separated them. Think Pokémon but
with engineers instead of pikachus.
The shi in focus from asset
performance to the human experience
has changed the physical use of space. It
is all about people now. And that’s why
there's a new type of Disney thinking in
CRE. Because where the workplace used
to be a place you had to go, now it's a
place you want to go.
The CoreNet Global Summit in Orange County, California, USA, questioned the role of
corporate real estate in leading, creating and fostering experiences that enable business
success. Jo Sutherland Magenta Associates MD and IFMA UK chapter Board Director reports