Concrete Analysis | Disruptive innovation to shake up office market; China, Asia may lead

At this year's CoreNet Global Asia-Pacific Summit in Hong Kong - which saw more than 600 delegates from corporations in Asia and elsewhere discussing the key challenges facing corporate real estate today - the topic centred on the theme of "disruptive innovation".

This could not be more timely, as recent research by CBRE revealed how significant shifts in attitudes across all generations will combine with radical business transformation to reshape how people work and the places people work in over the next 15 years.

Some of the coming disruptions to the workplace are already becoming clear. Artificial intelligence, for example, will be a significant disruptor and will likely reshape corporations. More crucially, CBRE's research revealed that the ability to attract and retain top talent will be the top competitive advantage for businesses in 2030 and that talent will increasingly rate their desire for purpose and meaning at work as important as remuneration. In one session at the CoreNet summit, delegates debated how addressing factors such as this might impact corporate real estate.

For building owners and developers the challenge is to create community - a diversity of rich cultural and social experiences within and around buildings that enliven the lives of those working in the buildings. There is also an opportunity to provide a breadth of amenity and services to tenants' workers to support their busy lives. This could be described as building "software" as a value-added service to occupiers in addition to the "hardware" of leasing space.

Within buildings, young people have a desire for workplaces that offer a wide variety of quiet retreats and collaborative settings, each ideal for a specific job or task or designed to suit a specific personal work style. At the centre of that workplace, teams cluster together in an open space. In Asia this was seen as a simple shared round table; in Western countries a collection of individual desks.

To be successful and remain competitive, corporations will need to completely reshape their workspaces to attract and accommodate the coming workforce. Asia and China may well lead the way in addressing these demands and reshaping the office environment

Among the respondents of the CBRE survey, young people in Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo demonstrated an incredibly strong appetite for change - more so than young people in New York and London. Young people in Asia do not want to take on a Western solution; they would rather borrow the best from the West and interpret it within their own culture. As it becomes increasingly challenging in China to retain staff there is a strong driver for Chinese firms to take action to remain competitive.