Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association.
There’s another major technology race shaping up, much like the race for outer space in the second half of the 20th century between the US and the former Soviet Union. It’s the race to establish the truly wireless workplace, and it will make the hard-wired office obsolete within five years.
These and other projections were among the insights offered by a panel of leading workplace experts at the Denmark-Sweden World Congress. With the introduction soon of new technologies such as RE semiconductors for wireless broadband Internet modems, the flexible workplace is about to get even more ubiquitous, said John Worthington, founder of the UK-based design firm DEGW. This technology will affect every piece of connected equipment in the modern office, including cellular phones, Palm Pilots, laptops and desktops, be added.
“The word ‘mobile’ will become totally redundant,” said Geoff Woodling of the UK-based Business Future Network. “The model will be fully integrated, and there will be a diversity of wireless cultures.”
Panel moderator Edmund Caddy of Gensler Architecture noted that “e-business” today is really all about efficiency, enablement and empowerment. The panel discussion was framed around the concept of shared service centers that are proliferating around Europe. The panelists discussed this topic within the context of how to use the Internet as a strategic tool, or as a means to an end.
Any number of support functions can be found in a typical shared service center (SSC), including human resources, financial services, IT, customer service and supply-chain management. Roel Spee of Pricewaterhouse Coopers says the most attractive locations for SSC clusters such as the Netherlands, UK and Ireland are “overheating” as the cost of attracting and keeping talented employees increases.
David Pearce Snyder, lifestyles editor of The Futurist magazine and a noted social forecaster, offered IDRC professionals a glimpse into the future as he said that the corporate real estate industry is “sitting on the edge of a revolutionary moment.” In tracing the development of the Internet age, Snyder observed that the so-called “e-revolution” is only now just beginning, with the information age having passed through two previous 25-year periods of the industrial era to reach a transformational stage today. “The bigger boom is to come” in terms of the Internet’s economic impact, he said, projecting that global e-business GDP would go from $32 trillion in 2000 to $290 trillion by the year 2400.
Systems: The Nortel Corporate Real Estate Story,” Copenhagen-Malmo World Congress, Sept. 11,2000:
Dennis McGowan and Charles Meachum of Nortel Networks in Europe told how Nortel plans to use the Internet to transform their real estate practices. Setting a precedent for the corporate real estate industry, the Nortel Internet-Intranet is believed to be the first fully integrated global Web-enabled communication and information environment to support customers and employees.
