With fewer people able to qualify for mortgages, he wonders, “What happens when the workforce rents versus buys? People will not be anchored to a community any longer.”
It will have huge impact on CRE, which itself leases more space than it owns today.
Govaars sees it as, “Maybe a larger factor than social media and generational differences” in a workplace context.
Higher-Level Forces
The impact of social media, however, cannot be discounted when we talk about remodeling at a time of growth with volatility and uncertainty still defining the climate.
Kim Burt, a visionary on cloud computing and wikis, agrees with the point that the workplace can’t be viewed any longer as the same as real estate. The scale and velocity of social media adoption – by people and companies – is one key reason.
‘The underlying keys to innovation are creativity
and design.’
Burt, founder of Amsterdam-based Original Creative Coop BV, believes that it won’t be cost savings or change management practices determining how many more employers will commit to mobility and other forms of AWS.
“It lies in the fact that society itself has changed,” she insists.
“Enabled primarily by an expanding ease of connectivity,” Burt says, “work will increasingly be combined with the other activities in our lives.” As part of this now-optimized era of the “knowledge worker,” knowledge-sharing becomes more critical.
So, as businesses remodel to suit the changing social backdrop, “organizations will need to create spaces that are more effective learning environments,” she predicts.
“The ‘work-place’ will increasingly become the ‘work-community,’ a place for collaboration and knowledge sharing,” foresees Burt.