According to one expert, we’re living in an unprecedented age of acceleration defined by two key realities. First, “if it can be done, it will be done,” and second, “if you don’t do it, someone else will.” Let me interpret. Any market-ready innovation that can cost-effectively improve user experience (UX) is a sure thing, and if you ignore this opportunity, it is also a sure thing that someone else will not … eventually.
Another more common way of framing this reality is “adapt or be left behind.” And the data bears this out. Two separate studies show companies that leverage innovations to optimize UX dominate their respective industries. Specifically, UX leaders compared to laggards provide three times greater financial return to investors, and are three times more resilient during recessionary periods with shallower troughs and quicker recovery.
Yet, decades of personal experience and industry data suggest housing is a huge innovation lagger. I’m not talking about incremental innovation; there’s plenty of that. I’m talking about transformational innovation. Like personal transportation disrupting overnight from the horse and buggy to the internal combustion engine automobile at the turn of the 20th Century and once again a hundred years later from the internal combustion engine to the electric car. Or personal communication in recent decades disrupting from landline phones to cell phones and then to smart phones.
To understand the massive fallout that happens with transformative innovation, consider there are 50 odd technologies made obsolete by smart phones. That’s the kind of innovation I’m talking about; the kind that virtually every other industry has experienced.
Now it’s housing’s turn. And I’ll boldly predict “What” this disruptive home of the future looks like with certainty. Very simply, it will track the latest disruption in the car industry to faster, better, and cheaper electric vehicles. This includes:
I predict this certain future is imminent because all of this innovation is market ready to deliver high-performance homes that live better and cost less. However, I’m not delusional and recognize many challenges lie ahead. How we get there is the subject of my new book entitled, “Housing 2.0: A Disruption Survival Guide.”
Please join me for a full-day workshop based on this book at the EEBA High-Performance Home Builder Summit in Salt Lake City on October 9, one day before the EEBA conference begins. The unique guidance at the core of this program is an extensively vetted framework for adapting to disruptive changes looming ahead for housing rather than being left behind.
My personal goal is to help ensure high-performance builders get in front of this innovation so they can become industry leaders. If it can be done; it will be done. If you don’t do it, someone else will.