Keynote Case Study: IAMC — Bold Decisions Build The Next Economic Wave

IAMC brought futurist Jim Carroll to its Fall 2017 gathering in Richmond, Virginia to challenge corporate real-estate and industrial leaders to align facilities and portfolio strategy with faster manufacturing and economic change.

Bold Decisions Build The Next Economic Wave

Facilities and portfolios are long-lived assets, but the technology, manufacturing methods, talent patterns and location economics around them can change quickly. Jim’s keynote pushed corporate real-estate leaders to think trends, not fads — and to challenge their assumptions about how fast the environment around their portfolios can actually change.

Six trends are shaping that shift.

• Manufacturing Reinvention. Advanced manufacturing changes the footprint, flexibility and capabilities required of industrial facilities.
• Smart Assets. Connected buildings and equipment turn physical assets into continuous streams of operational data.
• Automation. Robotics and automated processes alter space design, workflow and the economics of location.
• Portfolio Agility. Long-term portfolios need enough flexibility to respond to shorter technology and business-model cycles.
• Talent + Location. Where skills are available increasingly influences where organizations place facilities and investment.
• Strategic Risk. Future-ready portfolios require bold decisions before every variable is certain.

Long-lived assets require forward-looking decisions, Jim told the room — portfolio strategy cannot rest on yesterday’s assumptions.

It’s a message corporate real-estate leaders carried straight back into their own site-selection conversations. Explore more keynote case studies.