CoreNet Global coined the phrase in 2004. A CoRE 2010 research report related it to IRIS, or the ‘sweet spot’ where corporate real estate (CRE) integrates with IT, HR and other services that support the front line of business for the world’s leading corporations.
Today, our H. Bruce Russell Global Innovator’s Award embodies the same idea in a broader sense. It’s not only in the development and use of concepts like IRIS (Integrated Resources Infrastructure Solutions) that the Global Innovator’s Award represents innovation at the intersection. It’s reflected in a rich array of new thinking and leadership in many other management disciplines including but extending well beyond real estate.
Innovation also intersects across areas like asset management, outsourcing, technology, sustainability and community reinvestment, workplace change management, internal client relations management, external service provision, supply chain integration, portfolio optimization, the enterprise skill set, and globalization. We see its true impact as business success for the corporate enterprises served by our award nominees.
Corporate Real Estate Leader magazine salutes this year’s winners and finalists in this special January 2007 edition devoted to their case studies as written by the nominees, and as the panel of nine industry peers reviewed them. All 10 cases – four winners and six finalists – are published herein.
Reflections of Industry Change
The 2006 grouping demonstrates the latest round of ‘next big ideas’ in CRE, and they include some of the most experienced and insightful professionals we know from both the demand and supply sides. Never has the interaction between the two been more pronounced, because outsourcing and partnerships now dominate the industry landscape. It’s why we added a new category in 2006 to recognize collaboration between corporate real estate and CRE’s external service providers. Yet the award also signifies improvements yet to come.
While there’s a palpable sense of collaboration throughout the industry these days and a growing harmony flowing out of strategic partnerships between service providers and their corporate clients, there’s also some dissonance. Is there enough innovation in the industry today, especially from the service side? Are quality levels high enough? Is there a single service firm that can deliver to the global portfolio scale that some of their multinational clients need? Should CRE and its partners be at the table with business units instead of the C-Suite? Is outsourcing’s purpose to save on cost or to promote flexibility? Should we measure efficiency? How do we measure effectiveness?
Awards programs based on peer case reviews provide an ideal channel to air out and encourage the leadership and problem solving needed to address these and other industry tipping points. Yes, we’ve made a lot of progress toward our ultimate objective of aligning with the business and the business strategy – but we’ve got a way to go before we reach for the sliver cup.
Defining Innovation
The same holds true for other CoreNet Global channels that serve an industry purpose of benchmarking, airing out and solving issues and challenges. Solutions come in the form of new or creative approaches, ideas, concepts and applications. They sometimes make innovators out of industry professionals. They occasionally mark new ways of doing things, or more frequently reveal a better way to use, adapt or improve something that’s already been done. They almost always position the nominee at the strategic level of the corporate value chain.
Since 2000, CoreNet Global has recognized those innovators and their innovations, drawing special attention to the high levels of excellence fostered within – and at times outside of – our industry. For seven years, scores of the world’s most respected companies have submitted their cases for review by their industry peers in CRE regardless of membership standing in CoreNet Global and regardless of location or size of business. This industry-wide, inclusive approach helps define our role as an industry thought leader and by serving as the industry’s top provider of case-based knowledge sharing globally.
In fact, all of our awards programs are important channels for the discovery of wide bodies of new cases annually. Like all CoreNet Global awards, every legitimate case received for the Global Innovator’s Award is posted on our Knowledge Center Online. In turn, many of them are presented at Global Summits, Chapter learning events and Discovery Forums.
More so, virtually all of the award case nominations we receive are fueling contacts and content for a new series of CoreNet Global Communities of Learning. They even help inform some of the new expert research surveys that our Applied Research Center has launched.
The Ultimate Claim
There are few if any obstacles to becoming a nominee, starting with the established practice of self-nomination by an organization or nomination via a business or service provider partner. But a serious nomination needs to have a substantive case supporting it, one that clearly spells out the issue or challenge, the proposed solution and its implementation, results, lessons learned, and measures or metrics to prove its effectiveness. So any nominee needs to commit resources to communicate the case, as well as to effectively analyze it.
But while there’s time and talent involved, there are also substantial paybacks.
Harvard University adds cache. There each August, finalists present their cases to senior-level executives judging the competition, and the prestige of the award becomes tangible. The rewards for finalists go beyond the case competition at Harvard and even exceed the on-stage recognition before thousands of industry professionals held every fall during the CoreNet Global Summit. The professional and content networking opportunities among finalists are among the best that we can offer anywhere in our global network. The ability to say “Winner, Global Innovator’s Award” is one of the strongest branding opportunities available to an industry professional through CoreNet Global. It has to be earned, but it also has a lasting benefit, no doubt as part of the growing lineage and now emerging tradition of past winners.
Maybe, then, the essence of the Global Innovator’s Award is to be an intersection in itself. It’s a coordinate where the past and present meet the future. It’s a venue for new and established talent. It’s a place where many of the industry’s leading-edge practices and practitioners reside. It’s a knowledge-sharing crossroads where some of our best thinkers and doers converge every year and come together at that sweet spot of industry excellence known as the intersection of innovation.
Ultimately, it’s that intersection across which corporate and commercial real estate can and should add value to the corporate enterprises we serve.
Editor’s note: CoreNet Global wishes to thank the competition’s judges who had the difficult task of choosing this year’s winners from the many nominations received: Buzz Anderson, Cox; Dan Boutrouss, Sprint; Mark Gorman, Nortel; Mike Joroff, MIT; Renee Leach, Hewlett Packard; Don Moulton, NCH Corp.; Barry Varcoe, Royal Bank of Scotland; and Dr. Jacqueline Vischer, University of Montreal. Special thanks also go to the competition’s sponsors: Gensler, Equis Corporation, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
Previous Winners of the CoreNet Global H. Bruce Russell Global Innovators Awards
2000 New York City Economic Development Corporation, Sun Microsystems, U.S. General Services Administration
2001 Brisbane City Coucil, Cisco Systems, Gazely Properties, Georgia Power
2002 CIGNA, Grubb & Ellis, Miller Hughes Associates, Sun Microsystems
2003 Ford Land, Greater Fort Bend Economic Development Council, Sprint Enterprise Property Services, Toyota Real Estate and Facilities, U.S. Army
2004 Bank of America, BP International, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation
2005 Harvard University, The Hartford, Johnson Controls, Royal Bank of Scotland
