by Shane Henson — April 4, 2012—Owners and managers of corporate real estate won’t want to miss CoreNet Global’s new 2012 State of the Industry Report, which the worldwide association for corporate real estate (CRE) and workplace professionals, service providers and economic developers says captures many of the diverse, assorted, wide-ranging and often-conflicting factors shaping tomorrow’s global business landscape.
While the report offers ample evidence that the economic climate for corporate occupiers and supply-side commercial real estate service providers is improving and that 2011 was a fairly positive year for the industry, a sense of caution prevails.
“These and other developments may very well represent the outer tendrils of better times ahead for the industry,” the report notes. “Yet the always-present reality of cost cutting could mean that the tightest spending controls we’ve ever seen may still lie ahead.”
The report also underscores how corporate real estate executives hold sway over key business drivers like talent, innovation, productivity, speed to market and sustainability.
There is also an in-depth examination of how emerging work strategies are changing the workplace, and how the economy has increased the adoption of alternative and flexible work strategies now also linked to real-estate-compression trends. For example, space per person already averages 100 square feet or less in Europe, and data show the same will be case for 40% of companies in North America by the year 2017. Companies are using less office and work space, but they are making it more inviting, open, progressive and collaborative, the report stresses.
Yet even with more people than ever being allowed to work from home or other places outside the office, more of them prefer to go to the office. The report found that 70% of employees regard the office as the best place to interact with colleagues, and 40% of employees believe the office provides better tools and technology.
Parts of the new report are based on predictions coming from CoreNet Global’s Corporate Real Estate 2020 transformational research initiative. CRE executives from several hundred major companies globally are contributing their visions to this forward-facing body of work for what business and the workplace will be like by the year 2020.
Some of the key Corporate Real Estate 2020 “bold statements” include:
- Oil price volatility, supply chain quality, tariffs and other factors will spawn a return of manufacturing to the United States. This so-called “on-shoring” effect is already under way, and China will turn more toward serving its own growing consumer base and middle class.
- Employees will bring their own technology to work by the year 2020, because most companies can’t keep pace with the “relentless advance of technology,” especially the continuous introduction of new personal digital devices like tablets and iPhones.
- Cloud computing will be replaced by these “always networked” personal devices, because they will have “near-infinite” memory.
- So-called “green incentives” being offered by a growing number of cities and states are the main reason why sustainability has become the new “sweet spot” for corporations when they make location and expansion decisions.
- The Global Reporting Index, or GRI, will provide a reliable way to measure the impacts and return-on-investment of sustainable practices like energy management, intelligent building systems and reuse of materials to help inform the triple-bottom-line accounting format used today by many publicly traded companies.
- Employees will bring their own technology to work by the year 2020, because most companies can’t keep pace with the “relentless advance of technology,” especially the continuous introduction of new personal digital devices like tablets and iPhones.
The report also offers economic forecasts for the global economy and the commercial real estate sector, in addition to featuring insightful commentary from many senior-level CRE executives and other CRE industry thought leaders.
