As this week's Singapore Global Summit and April's New Orleans Global Summits will show, the need to 'move the needle' is more compelling than ever.
More people have begun talking about the need to change our industry model, and some of them are acting on it.
I heard from management guru Guy Kawasaki meantime. He calls it “jumping the curve.”
Western Union missed the boat an era ago by passing on the telephone. eBay got it right more recently by democratizing commerce.
In a more pointed way, we need to change CRE’s trajectory. We need a new paradigm, because it got blown up by the recession. Our main way of capitalizing the model – through transactions – bottomed out to levels no one ever thought we’d sink to.
This is one reason why the idea of "Paradox" is the main focus of the Singapore Summit programme.
One contradiction is that the CRE model needs to shift from short-term reward based on the transactions model we now see as ineffective, or in a minimal sense that is absent and a long way from where it was before.
Unexpected, competing combinations like frozen credit and capital, and declining prices and values” have taken us to this point. On the other hand, in Singapore this week, attendees will hear how the Asia markets have improved more than other global regions, interestingly.
As the April New Orleans programme will show, the ability to readapt is more critical than ever. Savvy players on the supply side of CRE already know that corporate clients want more emphasis on longer-term value creation and reward based on strategy, not short-term transactional returns. There will be plenty of conversation, and a growing set of actual cases, surrounding it all.