This post is more of a bookmark because the interactive PropTech Europe 2023: Top 100 infographic by BUILTWORLD in collaboration with PwC is along the lines I have be talking about with regard to how the smart buildings technology landscape might get sliced and diced. And that being akin to what Scott Brinker is doing in the MarTech world of my previous career as an entrepreneur (see more here). It was mentioned by the team at Metrikus who have kindly participated in some of the smart buildings event I have curated and moderated (see here and here). They have been selected as one the top 20 PropTech companies in the ‘building operations and FM tech’!’ category. The irony is not lost given comments by Gary Cottle and Michael Grant there in response to my post on LinkedIn suggesting the need for this kind of infographic in the smart building technology space (see here).

I do have a computer science MSc having studied IT as joint major as an undergraduate, but it was human-centred design orientated so I find diagrams a great way of understanding technology architecture – particularly as a system or ecosystem even. I mention this because Matthew Parris at GE Appliances has provided feedback on my LinkedIn announcement about the reboot of this blog (see here). It was in response to my earlier post about ‘interoperability’ that featured his diagram (see here). Short version is his feedback pointed out the limitations of traditional stacked or tiered hour-glass architecture (see here and here), and that ‘Unified Namespace’ is a more scalable and modern way of architecting industrial data system:

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I saw this diagram on a LinkedIn post from the folks at PropTech consultants Trustek today. Katie Whip who heads up Innovation, Strategy & ESG there participated in the first Simmtronic Summer Series of events I helped curate and moderate earlier this year, so I knew about their Verified Marketplace of solutions.

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I had a great chat with Brian Coogan at Ethos Engineering recently. We have been connected on LinkedIn for some time now, but finally met in person at the Smart Buildings Show this year. I mentioned I was looking at facilitating a collaboration to look at how the technology landscape might be sliced/diced, although prompting one might be more accurate description given my resources.

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I didn’t go to many of the conference sessions at the recent Smart Buildings Show as I was really there for the networking. However, I did check out the one on Your Path to Net Zero: Technology/Software-led roadmap to decarbonisation in building operations by Prabhu Ramachandran at Facilio and Ian Pearce from British Land.

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Following on from my recent Interoperability, what is it good for? post, I was reminded of Design, Unleased: Workplaces. A brand new world. Human-centred design – all or nothing paper (2020) from Hoare Lea by Michelle Wang (now at Deloitte) and Stephen Wreford (now at HBT digital advisory). Stephen participated in a symposium-like event I conceived and curated last year at 22 Bishopsgate supported by Cisco and ne of the vendor partners (see here). It’s still the closest to the kind of design thinking I have been posting about that I have seen, and particularly how that helps plug the gap between the evolution of smart buidings from the bottom-up and top-down approaches I mentioned in my previous post.

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Earlier this year I facilitated a retrofit-themed round table of developers, owners and operators at Cisco’s City of London HQ with help from author and ex-Arup Smart Building Consultant Jim Read. As a follow-up, we co-wrote an article about the talking points that had emerged for Smart Buildings Magazine you can read here. That was mostly framed around the role of retrofitting in the drive towards net zero, but also highlighted a key challenge that is a backdrop to this blog:

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Earlier this year I facilitated a retrofit-themed round table with developers, owners and operators at Cisco’s City of London offices (see list of attendees and key themes discussed here). As part of the follow-up I co-wrote an article for Smart Buildings Magazine on Retrofitting buildings and the drive towards net zero. We quoted Matthew Marson from JLL Technologies, who pointed out that there is a tough challenge ahead when it comes to drive to net zero given the yearly energy consumption target of 55kWh per m2, when average is around 160 kWh and best in class around 110.

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As part of the research for the book on more strategic content marketing I co-wrote pre-pandemic, I spoke to Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. They are the co-authors of the Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage (1999). Their business theory had been cited by a number of those I had spoken to about how the late Clayton Christensen’s jobs-to-be-done framework for better understanding customer behaviour might help join the dots between not only how to develop better and more innovative products, but also take them to market (see more here and here).

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As part of my market engagement approach I use a more immersive form of what is called contextual enquiry in user-centred design. That’s part of putting of research back into marketing, and informed by design thinking and particularly deep dive design research methodology of innovation specialists IDEO. But I also use a version of the five-phase non-linear ‘sensemaking’ process used by the team at ReD Associates to help solve business problems:

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