It is annoyingly as easy to make a strong bear case for real estate as a strong bull case. Even easier though to make a case that the commercial real estate industry is set for massive change.

A key driver of change is the, very belated, recognition that a digitally advanced company really can work anywhere. How things are today is not normal but post Covid-19 the fallacy in real estate that face to face is everything will be dead.

But the real driver will be a change in corporate management and operations. Distributed working necessitates management by outcome & pervasive digitisation. Presenteeism has to end & tech hardware/software/services upgraded.

Daniel Pink’s ‘Purpose, Autonomy, Mastery’ mantra is as good a summary of what is needed as any. Nail those threes and pretty much everything else will flow from there. (See his TED talk).

Plus recognise the paradox that as the world continues down the road of exponential technology the need for ‘exponential humanity’ becomes ever stronger. Human skills, for the majority, are more important than tech skills. Caveat...

I presuppose tech skills are a level to use any consumer or prosumer tech. But no we don’t all need to be coding neural networks. What we DO need to know is what technology is available and how it can augment us, and vice versa.

The point being here is that analogue AND digital skills are required. Likewise we DO need offices AND we need to be able to work elsewhere. The key is using the right real estate for the purpose at hand. That is what #SpaceAsAService is really about.

And why, BTW, that I’m short Flex space short term but very long, long term. Real estate is becoming much more complicated; it requires skills most companies don’t have. Creating and curating productive space is an iterative, ‘Build, Measure, Learn’ process: Workplace IS software

PS Two often misunderstood points. 1. Advocating distributed working IS NOT arguing for no offices and 2. Distributed working is more than WFH. It’s working locally to where one lives, not necessarily at home.