Apr 7, 2017
An old friend (who happens to be an accomplished tech CEO) recently suggested that I listen to a few Neil deGrasse Tyson podcast interviews. I found a great one produced by The Guardian on Spotify.
Some of Mr. Tyson's thoughts directly apply to many of the mature real estate corporations' businesses. In general, I like two of his important points (found at the 20th minute):
- Investments in science today will be engines of tomorrow's growth economies.
- Innovation culture allows cross pollination of one solution to another, frequently unrelated, problem.
3 examples:
- Medical Devices. Nearly all medical devices (CAT, PET, MRI, X-Ray) are able to work because of principles of physics discovered by physicist who had no interest in medicine. focusing on medical change delivers evolutionary progress.
- Stoves. If you're an expert in stoves, nobody can ask you to think really hard about ways to improve the pot belly stove beyond a few incremental features. No matter what, you won't create something as different as a microwave oven. This can not come about from incremental thinking about your own stove business. It comes from totally different technologies cross pollinating with your own. In this case, microwave communications.
- Grooved Pavement. Sometimes solutions are not high tech. Think grooves on off-ramp pavement. These originally came from NASA's need to control shuttle drift upon tarmac landings.
The way I see it, real estate organizations need to GET NEAR THE INNOVATIVE SCIENCE so that it can cross-pollinate with their needs and create new, revolutionary ways of doing business. Create an innovation culture. Embrace next generation #PropTech!
Tagged: metaprop