By October 2002, the Nasdaq had plummeted from its peak a whopping 78 percent to 1,114.11. It took a solid decade-and-a-half to recover. To this day, the share price of Cisco, the darling of Dot-com, has still never returned to March 2000 levels…
2025: the year proptech goes DIY en masse?
While corporate real estate groups have tried and spectacularly failed to develop their own BMS analytics, EPC retrofit and other technological tools, nimbler real estate SMEs are learning that the growing suite of genAI tools enable them, in some instances, to push back on their supposed disruptors…
Blockchain, metaverse, AI: the good, bad, and ugly of hype
Nesting, hot desking and psychological ownership of shared spaces
In 2016, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a video listing eight predictions for the world in 2030. The first prediction was “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy”. This prompted criticism from individuals and groups branding WEF’s vision as dystopian. In 2022, WEF Managing Director Adrian Monck addressed the mounting backlash to this video, associating it with the COVID-19 pandemic, antisemitism, mistrust of “The Great Reset” and the far-right. He argues that rather than being their vision for the future, it was little more than a topic introduced by Danish MP Ida Auken to spark debate. As of publishing, the English language version of this video is not available on WEF’s YouTube channel, however the Spanish and Mandarin language versions are.
Sam Altman’s “one-person unicorn” and the future of the office
OpenAI’s Sam Altman captured headlines for his speculation at the coming of the world’s first one-person billion-dollar company, enabled by advances in AI. With more firms comprising fewer employees (not to mention hybrid and/or remote workers), the average demand for space per company is both lower and more dynamic.
Does the Apple Vision Pro change the meta-, ahem, “spatial computing” conversation?
What faux Scottish lordships teach us about investor motivation
Whether you like it or not, WeWork’s Adam Neumann is right about the clogged toilet
Neumann’s claim of a sense of ownership aligns with a century-old theory known as “psychological ownership”, that is, “the state in which individuals feel as though the target of ownership or a piece of that target is ‘theirs’”. The very existence of possessive pronouns illustrates how embedded it is in our collective human mindset (my spouse, her article, their lunch table). In fact, you’ll find evidence of psychological ownership all around you. You might have a favourite desk in a co-working space that you’ve decorated, a preferred parking space, or in the case of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory sitcom, “my spot”.
Tenant experience and housing-as-a-service
The private rental market represents a significant portion of housing stock. In the UK, 19 percent of the housing stock is rented privately. In the European Union it is 22 percent and, in the US, 25 percent. Private landlords are often cited as poor maintainers of homes, and this has purportedly worsened in the UK as it has become “more difficult for landlords to profit from bricks and mortar”…
First mover disadvantage: technology, IP theft and the genesis of ideas
In November 2022, worldwide online search interest for a three-letter acronym (GPT) barely registered. Since then, interest has skyrocketed—if you thought the boom in metaverse interest 12 months ago was big, it is dwarfed in comparison (see chart below). GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer…
Managing cybersecurity and sustainability in an increasingly digital world
To put it mildly, recent years have served as a shakedown for global supply chains. We have seen fluctuations in the price of raw materials, resulting in an added layer of uncertainty to new builds and retrofits. According to the UK Office for National Statistics’ August Business Insights and Conditions Survey, 38% of UK construction firms reported having to absorb the added costs…
Why I (partly) disagree with Mark Cuban on the metaverse
A couple of weeks back, on the Altcoin Daily podcast, billionaire Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on the metaverse and virtual land. His criticisms are important for a number of reasons. Not only is he a billionaire, but he’s a billionaire on the record as a crypto enthusiast and even an investor in Yuga Labs (the entity behind Bored Ape Yacht Club and their recent foray into virtual land through ‘Otherside’)…
Decentralisation and the wisdom (or madness) of crowds
Bits and pieces: understanding real estate tokenisation
The steady march toward the virtual workplace
Once the coronavirus pandemic descended on us in early-2020, discussions around the future of the workplace went into overdrive. Investors dived into anything they assumed would benefit from the pandemic, including NASDAQ-listed Zoom Technologies (ZTNO). There was a significant problem with this particular case…
The house-unit showdown in a post-COVID world
How can technology address the UK social housing crisis?
What does Labor’s pivot on negative gearing mean for Australian property investors?
In late-July, Michelle Grattan of the University of Canberra penned an article for The Conversation analysing Federal Labor’s ‘small target’ strategy ahead of the 2022 election…
