I watched the Tesla Roadster reveal last week. Whatever you think of Elon Musk, he made an established industry look like it had stopped trying, and forced gravity to take a bow.
Yes, it was first promised in 2017, and as operators you’ve sat through plenty of demos that never made it to the property. But pause for a moment and consider what came to mind when someone said “automobile” before and after watching that Roadster reveal .
It got me thinking. Commercial real estate operators don’t lack imagination, and neither do their vendors. So why does the industry continue to struggle with technology adoption and engagement?
I get the operator’s dilemma. They carry the cost when technology fails. Budgets are set a year out and procurement takes months. Site teams turn over, and every new system is one more login to learn.
I’m on the vendor side, and I’ll own our part. Too much technology gets positioned for the person who signs the contract, not the person using it with a tenant or resident waiting at the desk.
So how do we achieve our own Roadster moment? On Thursday, Adrian C Danila is putting multifamily operators and vendors in one room to talk about The Adoption Gap.
That’s the right place to start, and here’s the challenge I’d put to that room: let’s flip the script.
As operators, you’ve heard too many pitches for products you didn’t ask for or could not implement. This time, you write the brief.
Pick one specific problem. Tell vendors what has to be true for your site teams to actually use it, for head office to trust it, and for it to cost less or generate more revenue than any alternative.
Then, tell us why no solution you’ve seen before has ever landed as a where-do-I-sign opportunity.
It can be something small, like a very specific analysis of concessions, or a way to collect recoveries. Or it can be big, like getting any question about any building answered in plain English, without anyone pulling a report.
Unreasonable? Possibly. But we just watched a car shift our perspective on an entire industry.
Bring your challenge to Adrian C Danila‘s session on Thursday and/or send it to your vendors. It’s how I’m challenging every operator I have the opportunity to speak with.
