On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

Cities were not built for EVs, autonomous delivery, or real-time data, but that’s where we’re heading. As aging infrastructure collides with next-gen demands, the call to develop smart urban infrastructure is becoming impossible to ignore.

At the STRATA Real Estate Summit on October 16, 2025, Kevin Mull, Senior Director at Bedrock Detroit, joins the panel “City Retrofits: Legacy Infrastructure, Future Vision” to explore how cities can transform intelligently, not incrementally.

Mull is a pioneer in urban mobility and connected parking solutions, co-founding the Detroit Smart Parking Lab and Urban Tech Xchange. His background at Bosch USA in transportation innovation and EV infrastructure gives him a unique lens on how tech can power more livable, flexible cities.

His approach to retrofitting city systems combines physical redevelopment with digital infrastructure, using data to make the built world responsive, efficient, and inclusive. He understands that successful city retrofits don’t just modernize; they unlock new forms of value.

At STRATA, Mull will spotlight how public-private partnerships, scalable pilots, and mobility-as-a-service models are key to bridging the gap between where our cities are and where they need to be.

As nearly a third of U.S. office buildings face potential obsolescence, these insights are both timely and urgent. Mull’s work shows that retrofitting isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about reclaiming relevance. The future of cities will be built by those who know how to rethink the past. Kevin Mull is one of them.

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On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

Cities are designed to evolve slowly—layer by layer, decade by decade. But today, the pace of change is anything but slow. AI is reshaping the workforce. Autonomous vehicles are redefining mobility. Robotics is transforming how we build, deliver, and live. The result? A growing mismatch between technological acceleration and the urban systems struggling to keep up.

At the STRATA Summit, co-hosted by HqO and MIT, Jennifer Strong, award-nominated journalist and creator of the SHIFT podcast, joins the panel “Cities at the Speed of Change” to examine how exponential technologies are colliding with slow-moving urban systems.

Jennifer has created narrative tech podcasts for ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal, and MIT Technology Review. Her current podcast, SHIFT, explores how automation is reshaping daily life—and what that means for people, cities, and systems. With a journalist’s eye for clarity and a deep understanding of emerging technology, she brings a unique perspective to the question at hand: how can cities evolve at the speed of silicon?

Her reporting explores how smart cities, robotics, and autonomous mobility are not isolated disruptions—but interconnected shifts remaking the urban fabric. At STRATA, Strong will help frame this convergence from a human-centric lens, grounded in real-world storytelling.

As the gap between silicon and concrete widens, Strong’s insights will help CRE leaders, developers, and policymakers understand how to adapt and why clarity, communication, and systems thinking are essential tools in this moment of accelerated change. This panel will help us understand the future before it arrives, and why cities must adapt not just structurally, but intellectually.

The age of intelligent infrastructure is here. The challenge now is to keep up.

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On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

As the built world enters a period of seismic change, the question of how to finance that transformation has become more urgent—and more complex. From entire cities being built from scratch to massive infrastructure retrofits, the future of real estate investing will look nothing like the past.

At the STRATA Summit, hosted by HqO and MIT on October 16, 2025, Robert Lair, Managing Partner at The Fund at Hula, joins the panel “Money Reimagined: New Capital for New Real Estate” to explore how capital models must evolve to meet this moment.

Lair’s work sits at the intersection of regional innovation, place-based investing, and early-stage capital. At Hula, he supports visionary founders who are reshaping how cities grow, backed by infrastructure that’s smarter, more sustainable, and deeply local.

With roots in angel investing, institutional finance, and entrepreneurship, Lair brings a systems-level view to real estate capital transformation. His insights reflect a belief that CRE investing must extend beyond buildings to include the ecosystems and technologies that support them.

At STRATA, Lair will delve into the future of real estate investing. Sharing how next-generation capital stacks—combining patient capital, mission-aligned partnerships, and long-horizon investment strategies—can unlock opportunities that traditional real estate finance often overlooks.

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On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

What Comes After the Built World We Inherited?
This October, Dominic Endicott will join leaders at the STRATA Real Estate Summit at MIT for the panel “City Retrofits: Legacy Infrastructure, Future Vision.”

This session tackles one of the defining challenges of our time: how do we reimagine cities when 30% of U.S. office buildings—worth more than $1.1 trillion—face obsolescence? For Dominic, the answer is not just retrofitting structures, but rethinking the very systems that shape them.

Why This Conversation Matters Now
Cities and towns are under converging pressures: rising housing costs, demographic shifts, climate adaptation, and strained infrastructure—all while technology accelerates. AI, robotics, and digital platforms are transforming economies faster than cities can adapt. Dominic believes this moment is a narrow but powerful window to design places that expand human potential rather than constrain it.

Interpreting STRATA’s Core Question
When asked, “What comes after the built world we inherited?”, Dominic points to his work on Knowledge Towns. The industrial model of separating work, housing, learning, and health no longer fits. What follows are Knowledge Neighborhoods—ecosystems where universities, startups, advanced manufacturing, and community life are interwoven. Compact, agile, and replicable, they offer a strategy for unlocking prosperity quickly and inclusively.

The Role of Technology
Dominic emphasizes that technology—especially AI, robotics, and digital twins—is not only a productivity engine but a design partner. It can simulate, optimize, and personalize cities, repurpose data center energy for communities, and accelerate modular housing. But for this innovation to succeed, it must be embedded in walkable, livable, human-centered places.

The Opportunity and the Challenge
The opportunity is to align urban prosperity with human potential, creating places that attract talent, spark startups, and provide affordable housing with integrated wellness. The challenge is pace and scale: millions of new homes, tens of millions of square feet of innovation space, and trillions in upgraded infrastructure—requiring new financial stacks that reward long-term value creation.

About Dominic Endicott
Dominic is co-author of Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). A venture investor and strategist, he has scaled companies to $800M exits and led U.S. operations for Nauta Capital, a $500M global venture firm. Today, he’s focused on building Knowledge Towns across New England and globally—channeling billions into micro-innovation districts that redefine how prosperity is created and shared.

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On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

As hybrid work models take hold and commercial occupancy rates decline, cities worldwide are confronting a stark new reality: aging real estate is at risk of becoming irrelevant. According to Bloomberg, nearly 30% of U.S. office buildings, valued at over $1.1 trillion, could soon be obsolete.

But obsolescence is not destiny. At STRATA, HqO’s real estate summit co-hosted with MIT, Andy Doyle, Director of Operations, Innovation & Strategy at Grosvenor Property UK, will take the stage during the panel “City Retrofits: Legacy Infrastructure, Future Vision” to explore how we can reinvent—not just replace—the built environment.

Doyle brings a rare blend of operational strategy, venture investment, and urban innovation expertise. At Grosvenor, he leads both digital transformation and venture activity, aligning property development with intelligent infrastructure. Previously, at Deloitte, he advised public and private sector clients on real estate transformation and complex capital programs.

Doyle approaches retrofitting not just as a technical upgrade but as an opportunity to deliver enduring value, encompassing both social, economic, and environmental benefits. His systems-oriented perspective bridges technology integration, data strategy, and long-range planning to help cities unlock the potential in existing assets.

At STRATA, he’ll help redefine what it means to modernize urban infrastructure in an era of rapid technological change. His insights will be essential for CRE leaders, investors, and developers looking to position legacy portfolios for long-term relevance. Andy Doyle is helping cities evolve with purpose, transforming what we’ve inherited into infrastructure fit for the future.

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On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

At the heart of every city lies a simple question: what kind of future are we building — and for whom? At this year’s STRATA Summit, Joseph Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy and a pioneer in customer-centric thinking, will challenge commercial real estate leaders to think bigger, deeper, and more humanely about the environments we shape.

Joe joins STRATA to share a bold framework from his upcoming book The Transformation Economy, which extends the Experience Economy into something more aspirational: showing how customers want not only memorable experiences but transformative ones as well

“There’s no greater economic value than guiding people toward achieving their aspirations.”

In a time when real estate is being asked to do more — be more adaptive, intelligent, and human-centered — Joe’s ideas arrive right on time.

For CRE professionals navigating a shifting landscape, Joe offers clarity: technology is not just about optimization — it’s about transformation. From AI to adaptive environments, he envisions a built world that actively senses, learns, and responds to individual needs in real-time. This isn’t the future of facilities; it’s the future of flourishing.

Joe reminds us that cities exist to uplift people — to foster human prosperity at scale. As systems thinkers, real estate leaders must now ask how their assets, platforms, and partnerships contribute to that mission.

His message to STRATA attendees is clear: embrace the opportunity to create meaningful, personal, and transformational experiences. Because when places are built not just to serve, but to elevate, we don’t just improve cities — we improve lives.

On October 16, 2025, at the Boston Marriott Cambridge, STRATA will bring together the leaders at the forefront of this transformation. Join Joe Pine and other leaders to help define what comes after the built world we have inherited.

STRATA — Where the Built World Meets What’s Next. 

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On October 16, 2025, a select group of leaders will gather for STRATA, a summit co-hosted by HqO and the MIT Center for Real Estate

The systems that shape our cities—real estate, capital, infrastructure—are being stretched beyond their original limits. In response, a new wave of thinkers is designing what comes next. Neil Mandt is a visionary at the intersection of media, technology, and real estate, who will take the stage at STRATA on October 16, 2025.

Mandt brings a unique lens to the built world, with a background in Hollywood and emerging technology. And as the founder of Digital Rights Management (DRM), he has spent the last decade pioneering digital property rights, introducing a new layer of value above physical assets.

His work reframes how real estate owners think about space, not just in terms of square footage, but in terms of digital airspace. A frontier that has long existed but remained economically invisible.

The summit is not simply about buildings or cities; it’s about infrastructure as strategic leverage in a world being redefined by intelligence, networks, and convergence. Mandt’s presence underscores that real estate is no longer just a static asset class, but a platform with dynamic potential.

During the “Money Reimagined: New Capital for New Real Estate” session, he will join a panel of speakers to explore how legacy investment models are misaligned with the demands of future-ready cities. The discussion will examine how innovations in capital, ownership, and infrastructure must co-evolve to meet the scale and complexity of global urban transformation.

STRATA brings together leaders ready to think in systems, act on conviction, and build for the long term. Neil Mandt’s work is a signal of the creative, cross-disciplinary thinking this moment requires.

On October 16, 2025, at the Boston Marriott Cambridge, STRATA will bring together the leaders at the forefront of this transformation.

STRATA: Where the Built World Meets What’s Next. 

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Kirsty Angerer is currently a Development Director at Leesman, helping to equip executives at all levels to make informed, forward-thinking decisions that allow them to mitigate risk, plan for the future, and benefit from great employee workplace experiences. Her passion for human-centric design — and the interactions among humans and their workplaces — stems from over 10 years of experience in the industry. She has worked internationally with subject matter experts and Fortune 500 companies to enhance people’s health and optimize performance through developing and implementing ergonomics programs, as well as influencing the design of workplaces.

Thank you for joining us, Kirsty! To kick things off, can you tell our readers a little bit about your role and your background in the industry?

Absolutely! My background is actually in Ergonomics and Human Factors. I’ve spent the last 10 or 12 years working with organizations, helping them build their ergonomic strategies. That means helping them to understand how we interact with each other, how we interact with the tools that we’re working with, and then also how we interact with the space around us — whether that’s a home, in the office, or everything in between.

It’s been a very interesting career working in the workplace sector. I’ve been very fortunate to see some of the most outstanding buildings around the world, and obviously some of the not-so-brilliant buildings. But, of course, my role has been to identify opportunities to improve those spaces for the people that are ultimately going to be working in them, and that’s what has directed my purpose. 

Your background is so unique — did you spend that entire time with Leesman? How did you evolve into your current role?

I actually studied Ergonomics and Human Factors at university, and then very quickly ended up in the workplace sector. I spent many years working internationally, so I’ve traveled a lot throughout the UK, Australia, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. I actually only recently joined Leesman in the last four months as a Development Director. It’s an opportunity for me to bring my Human Factors lens to the conversations that we’re having with our clients. My role at Leesman is to understand employee needs and experience for each organization I’m working with, and to share those insights. Armed with this data, organizations can improve their workplace experience, channel investment where it makes the most impact, and continue to engage employees by meeting their needs.

That’s such a unique trajectory. In your own words, what does Leesman do and how does your role match their larger goals and vision?

Leesman measures and analyzes employee experience. In fact, we have the largest global database of employee experience data. This means we can help organizations understand their workplace by drawing from those intimate insights on what people are saying about their office or home experience. Given that, we have such incredible levels of data — and, of course, learnings from the past few years when the pandemic began. I think it’s really important to share those trends and research insights, which is why we do regular webinars, events and research briefings. Culturally, we strive to help the sector as a whole improve.

Has Leesman’s approach changed over the course of the pandemic?

Of course. The original Leesman survey is our Leesman Office Survey — that’s our flagship and it was developed more than 12 years ago. As a catalyst of the pandemic, our research team developed the Home Survey. It has really enabled people and organizations to understand and build clarity on remote working. I would say about 95% of our clients, if not many more, are utilizing our Leesman Hybrid Survey. It directly compares the office and home work environments, and helps organizations understand what is working well in each, and what is not working well. It also sparks discussion around drawing people into the physical office, and different use-cases for different organizations.

That makes total sense. I also want to speak about a webinar you hosted recently, called Purposeful Presence, which is related to that topic. What does that phrase mean, and how does it apply to the modern workforce?

“Purposeful Presence” is definitely a term we’re going to be hearing more and more of. It encapsulates the office having a real purpose for employees to return to, because it can offer something that the home working environment cannot. When we look at our most recent Leesman insights from the last few quarters, we can see that the home working space still offers a really compelling argument for people to use it as a work environment — meaning that many people still enjoy working from home and are better supported for the majority of activities that they do. So, purposeful presence now becomes the concept  we can use to magnetize people back to physical office environments. 

For example, if I’m going to leave my home working setup that I’ve curated myself — with the design aesthetic that I want, the temperature levels I like, the food around me that I enjoy, comfortable and familiar amenities, and all my other preferences — what is the purpose of the office for me now? That’s what purposeful presence is about: understanding people’s behavior change when they consider the commute to the office. 

We’ve had those discussions at HqO as well. I know Leesman CEO Tim Oldman has used the phrase “the hotelification of office space” before. How does that relate to purposeful presence?

With regards to hotelification, it’s really important to understand the nuance of the term. Leesman has been utilizing the term purposeful presence more readily, because it can be segmented into three sections: conscious decision-making; the power of connection and hotelification; and reflection. The first stage is conscious decision-making – it’s about giving employees the freedom to choose the work setting that is most optimal for their needs. If organizations mandate people’s return to the office for a set number of days it can’t facilitate conscious decision making. 

The second stage can be described as the power of connection and hotelification.When our research team looked at how workers with freedom interact with their workplaces, they were able to uncover some of the forces at play in attracting them between the office and home. What we can see in our data right now is that the office is no longer the only environment that enables effective collaboration. Collaboration activities are supported by the home environment as well as, if not better than the office environment. The office, though, does support the connective activities to a larger extent, things like learning from others, hosting visitors and informal social interaction. 

And finally, the third stage of purposeful presence is the reflection. When you are on that journey home and you consider the day you’ve had in the office, do you find yourself beaming with joy and wanting to come back or that the experience was so underwhelming that you are now questioning whether the commute was worth it and left wondering when you’ll be back again? When we consider the cost of working instead of a cost of living, we can think of it in a few ways; the cost of time spent getting up earlier and journeying to the office, the cost of travel and the cost to our own personal energy.

It’s important to recognize that this is all cyclical in nature. If employees positively reflect on their time in the office, the next conscious decision to attend is much simpler. 

Workplaces are most definitely becoming more functional and engaging to give people a reason to return, much like how the hospitality industry has evolved over time.

So when we consider hotelification, it isn’t about the change of service levels or turning offices into hotels, it’s understanding the behavioral shift of people coming to the office in the same way people consider staying in a hotel room. When you stay at a hotel there is an expectation that the wifi is easy to connect to, that the view is better than peering into your neighbors home, that there might be a chocolate delicately placed on the pillow, that the pillow is so fluffy that when you lay down you feel like you’re on clouds and you notice the perfectly ironed sheets, that when you open the wardrobe there is an equally fluffy dressing gown with matching slippers and hand moisturizer that smells divine. You are left with a great feeling of pleasure and happiness and a reason to want to come back. The small, seemingly insignificant moments that actually really matter.

What other important trend(s) has Leesman seen in the market for employee experience?

To be clear: from a Leesman perspective, we’re not here to consult clients on how they design their workplaces, or what they do with their culture. Our job is to provide them with the data that we collect using our methodologies. We then help draw insights and steer people in the right direction to help them understand their workplaces better. 

Home working data has been really compelling in this. Between Q3 of 2021 and Q2 of 2022, there has been an increase of people working in a hybrid manner, which includes the home space. We can see this starting to settle, which means that every other working environment — such as home only or office only options — is declining. To compound that, we’re seeing a 15% increase of people choosing to design a dedicated work room or office at home. That tells us that people are spending money on building a shed in the garden or sacrificing a bedroom to use as a work space at home, versus spending the money on the commute to the physical office.

With this type of data, we can see that the home working space has longevity. It’s not to say that the office is dead — it is absolutely not! But if you want to draw people back to the office, you have to understand that the home is a pretty good option for a lot of people and so organizations should focus on the activities that are better supported in the office environment such as those connective activities we spoke about earlier.

On the other hand, what do you think makes the office compelling?

The areas that have a much larger gap where the home can’t satisfy those needs are learning from others; hosting visitors, clients, and customers; and informal social interaction. This is why we shouldn’t see the home or office space as a right or wrong option. We should see it as a pendulum and a balance between the two. Some days, the office is going to provide a better experience for our needs. Other days, the home will provide a better experience.

Exactly. We’ve seen that it’s more about giving employees choice in the work day and enabling flexibility. 

Absolutely. We can clearly see that choice is intrinsic to experience. For example, when we look at our well-being module between Q3 2021 and Q2 2022 (which includes over 20,000 respondents), we can see that those who responded with agreement to the statement ‘I have freedom over where I do the work related to my job’ feel much better supported with all 21 work activities than those who disagreed they have freedom to choose where they work. So it’s basically reinforcing that if you give people the choice over where they work, they are going to feel better supported in all of the activities they do related to their job.

Have you seen organizations using technology to help with these trends and needed flexibility in the workplace? 

We have. In fact, many of our questions talk about technology. We also have a separate IT module that organizations can deploy to get really granular with this topic. If you’re thinking about purposeful presence and the conscious decision-making of coming into the office, you’ll have a lot of considerations in your day-to-day routine. You might have to think about what train you’re going to take, which colleagues are going to be in the office, if you need to book a desk or room — all questions that involve controlling your work environment. Technology can meet all those needs, and it becomes a really important feature to enable us to come to the office in a much more relaxed, comfortable, and productive manner. 

To wrap things up, what do you think the future of work will look like?

I think there’s going to be a lot of experimenting that still needs to happen, and should happen. Of course, we have the Leesman benchmark where organizations can see what their peers are doing and what regions are doing with their workplaces. But ultimately, each organization has their own set of values that they should consider. Observing their peers can be somewhat resourceful, but looking inwards is where ultimate clarity unfolds.

And whilst we can see the dust settling over hybrid working, there is still a lot of work to do for many organizations in facilitating an outstanding employee experience.

Wonderful! Where can our readers learn more about Leesman and the work you do?

Definitely our website, LeesmanIndex.com. All of our events and webinars are listed there. We’re also all pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn. We’re always sharing our own personal insights into the workplace, and we love continuing that discussion. I encourage all of your readers to engage with us!

Conversations is a monthly blog series that features managers, partners, and topical experts working on the front lines of workplace experience — discussing the things they see, the challenges they have, and how technology impacts their work. For more information about how HqO can elevate your workplace experience strategies, schedule a free demo today.

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Managing Director, Global Business Development at WiredScore 

WiredScore is the organization behind the WiredScore and SmartScore certifications for smart buildings. As Managing Director of Global Business Development, Tom is responsible for leading WiredScore’s global go-to-market strategy. Before moving into his current position, he served as WiredScore’s Country Director for the United States, and, before that, as the company’s Business Development Director for the United Kingdom and Ireland. Since becoming Managing Director in January 2022, Tom has helped lead WiredScore’s successful expansion in the Europe and the Asia Pacific (APAC) regions. He’s been with the company since 2015, and is currently based in London.  

Thanks for joining us, Tom! Can you start by telling us more about WiredScore and its mission?

WiredScore sets the standard for technology in the built environment through our certification and education process. Our mission is to make the world’s buildings smarter and better connected. We empower people and spaces through the implementation of technology that will have a lasting impact. We do that by assessing, certifying, and improving the technological capabilities of real estate. 

At WiredScore, we believe the future will happen in buildings, and that the responses to some of the biggest challenges of our time — the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, for example — will and ought to be addressed with the help of in-building technology. We want to give the end users of these buildings access to great connectivity that not only improves their experience, but actually helps us all move toward a smarter, more sustainable, and better connected future. 

WiredScore offers a well-known certification — SmartScore — that applies directly to commercial real estate. Can you tell us more about what that certification entails? 

SmartScore is unique in that it’s the only global smart building certification that is built by and for the real estate sector. It measures both the user functionality and the technological foundations of a building by assigning it scores in four key areas: sustainability, user experience, cost-efficiency, and long-term outlook (the extent to which the building is “future-proofed,” as we like to say). 

WiredScore works hand-in-hand with landlords who are pursuing this certification to deliver an outcomes-based strategy for their smart building portfolio. We help inform and guide the implementation of technology in a way that is meant to ensure long-term success in all key areas.

Examples of SmartScore certified buildings include The Hickman Building in London; The EQ Building in Bristol; 100 Liverpool Street in London; 22 Bishopsgate in London; 151 North Franklin in New York City; 17xM in Washington, DC; and RiverSouth in Texas.

All of these buildings have passed the SmartScore certification process, which means that they’ve been vetted by a rigorous set of procedures that are meant to guarantee long-term success. And obviously, these aren’t the only buildings to have achieved the certification. We’re constantly working with landlords all around the globe to help them assess and iterate smart building technology in order to create a better future.  

How is SmartScore different from other building certifications like LEED, or WELL AP?

SmartScore is designed to be complementary to other peer certifications such as LEED and WELL, which look specifically at sustainability and wellness, respectively. 

The alignment between LEED and SmartScore proves that both the US Green Building Council — which offers the LEED certification — and WiredScore are jointly committed to supporting the development of buildings that prioritize enhanced performance and high standards of sustainability. Both organizations committed to ensure a better built environment for today’s users, and tomorrow’s world. 

The alignment between WELL and Smartscore, meanwhile, demonstrates that the adoption of technologies are crucial in the design and management of healthy buildings and healthy occupants. Both certifications help to create a built world that better serves the users of building space. The International Well Building Institute™and WiredScore are both committed to ensuring that occupant health and wellbeing sit at the top of the agenda.

In addition, both WiredScore and SmartScore have recently been approved for credits on the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) assessment, meaning that clients who submit under GRESB will receive credits for their certified buildings. GRESB is the ESG performance and sustainability best practices for real estate funds and companies worldwide. The alignment between WiredScore and the GRESB really speaks to the great importance that technology has in creating a sustainable future in real estate.

Why is a certification like SmartScore so important for owners, operators, and even tenant companies in the current market? 

We live and work in a rapidly changing world, and I think that now, in the face of all this change, people want to feel that the buildings where they live and work are resilient to turmoil. But that’s only going to happen if the buildings that occupy our cities are properly outfitted with robust connectivity and the right kinds of smart technology. 

We are finding more and more that the end users of buildings want that reassurance of an outstanding experience and, as a result, landlords and developers are having to respond to these requirements by actively showing their commitment to this. We truly believe that it is technology and great connectivity that is underpinning this and will continue to do so long into the future.

WiredScore is a global company. Can you tell us a little bit about what that means? What’s it like to operate in countries all around the world?

WiredScore was founded almost a decade ago in New York City, which is where our headquarters are today. In the years since our founding, we have grown immensely on a global scale. We’re now present in 27 countries, and that number is expected to be above 30 by the end of this year. We have certified over 800 million square feet with over 900 of the largest landlords in the world. We have great brand awareness across all our markets, with the greatest penetration coming in leading global cities like New York, Boston, London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin & Sydney. As a single market, the US has seen the largest adoption with over 400 million square feet of office space certified. 

Obviously, there are challenges that come with being a global company. But we’ve adapted well as we’ve expanded, and will continue to do so going forward. It’s a really exciting time for our company.

What kinds of technologies can help companies achieve a SmartScore certification?

Once you’ve decided to make a building ‘smart,’ it’s easy to jump straight in and start adding all kinds of technology without a clear roadmap to success. But one of the things that we’ve learned since starting WiredScore is that it’s really important to be intentional about upgrades and smart building expansions. If you’re actually going to make your building ‘smart,’ you really need to start by establishing a well-vetted plan that’s shared by all stakeholders. It doesn’t work to just throw things at the wall and see what works. We know that from experience. And that’s exactly what we provide for our customers. 

SmartScore helps companies optimize building operations by providing a globally recognised framework for the successful development of smart buildings. We help inform and guide the implementation of technology in a way that is applicable for every part of delivery for a building. 

We really focus on improving user outcomes in areas like individual and collaborative productivity; maintenance and operations; health and wellbeing; cyber security; data sharing; landlord integration networks, and so on. We know from experience that success in these and other related areas help set landlords up for success.

How does all of this play into the future of work?

An important question! I think that, at the most macro level, real estate companies now have to deal with tremendous levels of uncertainty. They’ve got COVID to deal with, of course, but they also have to think about other issues like inflation, supply chain problems, and general economic volatility, all of which can really impact the state of the real estate market. We’re in an odd moment right now. Things are moving fast. Change is a constant.

The response to this new economic reality, generally, has been to gravitate towards buildings and business strategies that offer greater resiliency. Because the future is uncertain, companies know that they have to be able to handle a wide variety of unforeseen scenarios. They need to have robust strategies and building capabilities in order to attract and retain the best possible talent. And that’s what WiredScore offers, on a basic level. We help companies prepare for an uncertain future. 

Conversations is a monthly blog series that features managers, partners, and topical experts working on the front lines of workplace experience — discussing the things they see, the challenges they have, and how technology impacts their work. For more information about how HqO can elevate your workplace experience strategies, schedule a free demo today.

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B. Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups alike. He is a Co-Founder of Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. In 1999 Pine and his partner James H. Gilmore wrote the best-selling book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage, which demonstrates how goods and services are no longer enough. What companies must offer today are experiences — memorable events that engage each customer in an inherently personal way.

It’s nice to chat with you again, Joe! For our readers, would you mind telling us a little bit about your background and your area of expertise?

Absolutely. After a 13-year career at IBM, I’m now an author and management advisor. I like to say that my purpose at work is to figure out what’s going on in the world of business and then develop frameworks that first describe it, and then to prescribe what companies can do about it. Short version? “Frameworks ‘R’ Us.” I did that first with my first book Mass Customization, which is about efficiently serving customers uniquely, and then again with The Experience Economy, which says that goods and services are no longer enough; what customers really want are experiences — or memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way. My partner Jim Gilmore and I followed that up with Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, and I also wrote Infinite Possibility about using digital technology to fuse the real and the virtual worlds.

Your work around the Experience Economy is certainly impressive. And, as many already know, you spoke about it at HqO’s first-ever EXPERIENCE conference in 2021. What encouraged you to become an experience expert?

Once I discovered that experiences were a distinct economic offering — as distinct from services as services are from goods — I could not help but explore it thoroughly and become an expert! I realized that meant that there would be an economy where experiences became the predominant economic offering, and with Jim sought to fully understand how companies could go beyond goods and services to stage engaging, compelling, and memorable experiences.

Do you mind talking a little more about the model you created that explains how, in an experience economy, goods can become commodities, and so on and so forth?

The core model in the book is the “Progression of Economic Value,” which describes how economies have changed over millennia. First there was the Agrarian Economy based on commodities, then the Industrial Economy based on goods, then the Service Economy, and now today’s Experience Economy. One effect of these shifts is that in the Service Economy goods increasingly became commoditized — which means they are treated like a commodity where customers didn’t care about the features or benefits, but focused more and more on convenience and especially price. Services too became increasingly commoditized as customers shifted their desires more to experiences. To avoid commoditization, companies needed to shift up this Progression of Economic Value and become experience stagers, usually in addition to whatever offerings they produced before. 

Thank you! You’ve come out with several books on this topic since The Experience Economy, each more interesting than the last. How have your learnings evolved over time?

Well, when I first discovered the Experience Economy there wasn’t even a World Wide Web yet, so the biggest impact has been the rise of digital technology! Note first that the Internet is the greatest force of commoditization, as it enables customers to instantly compare prices and pushes companies down to lower prices. Second, anything you can digitize you can customize. How I discovered all this is from my original work on Mass Customization — recognizing that customizing a good automatically turns it into a service —- and customizing a service turns it into an experience! And third, digital technology enables the innovation of new and wondrous experiences that simply are not possible in Reality. That’s what I explored more fully in Infinite Possibility. 

There are of course many other lessons over the years, such as recognizing that time is the currency of experiences. In fact, services are about time well saved — make it nice, easy, and convenient — while experiences are about time well spent, where people value the time that they spend with the company. And there is a fifth and final level in the Progression of Economic Value where experiences are used as the raw material to guide people to change, to help them achieve their aspirations. Think about fitness centers, healthcare, weight loss, management consulting, and coaches of all stripes. I understood such transformations were also a distinct economic offering from the very beginning, but more recently realized they offered time well-invested. Earlier this year I expanded on the idea of transformation offerings with colleagues in the Harvard Business Review with an article on “The ‘New You’ Business.”

I will definitely read that article! What other recent things can we read from you? 

The latest book was our 2020 re-release of The Experience Economy (which followed a 2011 Updated Edition from the original 1999 book), where we started with a new preview on Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money. We introduced that concept of shifting from time well saved to time well spent and then put the rest of the book’s ideas into five elements to help companies stage experiences that are robust, cohesive, personal, dramatic, and even transformative. One new idea I particularly like is the “Money Value of Time,” where companies can compare themselves against others by measuring the expenditures per minute in their experience places.

How does technology, as you mentioned earlier, play into staging experiences?

Well, the promise of digital technology is to fuse the real and the virtual through purpose-built virtual reality places, through using devices to augment our reality and bringing game-like experiences out into the real world as an alternate reality. Even using atomization to 3D print anything we can imagine! I discuss all these and more in Infinite Possibility, but another use of digital technology has only become clear in the past several years, and that is in creating experience platforms, or XPlatforms. These bring the power of platforms that have long played a disruptive role in commodities, goods, and services industries into the Experience Economy. This is done  by enabling platform providers to offer and link together myriad different experiences on the one side, with those who desire such experiences on the other side.

How do you think landlords and employers can apply these learnings to the commercial real estate market and workplace experiences?

Everything I’m talking about applies not just to consumer industries but to B2B industries and employees as well. In fact, if you want to create a compelling experience for your customers, you had better stage engaging and even transformative experiences for your employees! Landlords and employers really need to focus on this today using all the same ideas, principles, and frameworks I have long written and talked about, including using experience platforms such as HqO to operationalize them directly for, to, and with tenants and employees.

Thanks so much for this conversation, Joe! Insightful as always. Where can our readers go to learn more about you and your work?

You can find me at Twitter (@joepine), on LinkedIn (/joepine), and at our own website, https://strategichorizons.com/. There’s a contact page there to sign up for our quarterly FieldNotes newsletter to keep up to date on the Experience Economy.

Conversations is a monthly blog series that features managers, partners, and topical experts working on the front lines of workplace experience — discussing the things they see, the challenges they have, and how technology impacts their work. For more information about how HqO can elevate your workplace experience strategies, schedule a free demo today.

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