Navigating Uncertainty with Action and Optimism
Strategy is nothing without action. At this year’s PropTech Denmark Symposium, the message was clear: if you’ve got a great plan, now’s the time to back it with bold, practical moves. Between AI, climate resilience, and cultural shifts in real estate, the urgency is real – but so is the optimism.
Antony Slumbers
Keynote speaker, antonyslumbers.com
“If you’ve got a great strategy - then go all in”
This was the best advice I heard all day at this years PropTech Denmark Symposium.
A call to arms, a statement of intent, and an example of the positivity that rang out across all participants at the event. The overall tone was of a strong sense of urgency coupled with cautious optimism. Sure, significant challenges remain in terms of ethical implementation, full-scale adoption, genuine transformation (beyond mere digitisation), and effective leadership through uncertainty. But there was an awareness of what’s at stake – a built environment faced with many challenges – and a genuine desire to improve ‘everything’ about the modern real estate industry. In my experience, this is the PropTech event for those who genuinely like real estate. Not as a financial instrument, but as the places and spaces we all spend most of our lives in. It’s about technology, but in the service of creating great user experiences.
So what were the main themes?
AI is very rapidly coming of age, with 80% of Danish real estate companies saying they use it, and this is turbo charging an already underway movement to ‘sort our data out’. There’s a widespread understanding that data is the foundational layer on top of which all manner of new products and services can be offered utilising AI. Yes, the actual penetration of active daily AI users is still low (as in most industries), but the awareness of problems that AI could be applied to is growing fast.
Despite global headwinds or skepticism in some quarters regarding climate change and sustainability, this audience was very clear that wishing the problem away won’t cut it. Costs from ‘climate events’ are real, and substantial and we know we need to continue with ‘the Green Transition’. We listened to a rousing talk in praise of biodiversity, and in an enlightening ‘scenario modelling’ session we were all taken through the potential consequences of not being resilient enough to counter energy disasters, such as the recent one in Spain. With no power, things can go very badly wrong very quickly.
There was a strong emphasis on uncertainty, and it was pointed out that major geopolitical fissures are growing and we need to be thinking it terms of ‘surfing’ the waves of change rather than expecting calm seas to return any time soon. Building our innate resilience must be a priority - you can’t plan beyond being ready for anything.
As the world becomes ever more technologically sophisticated we need to double down on human-centricity, collaboration & culture. Fundamentally we must create real estate that people need, enjoy and want to be in. Without working hard on culture and shared values we’ll just not get to where we need to be. And value comes from creating great real estate. Beauty offers ROI.
And finally, as in the opening quotation above, the tone of the day was deeply skewed towards developing robust strategies, acting on them and focussing on practical applications. Start with the customer and work back to the technology.
The imperative was on maintaining a mindset that had the spirit of a startup and pushing on through to create a better built environment. Beauty, Architecture, Location are where you should start - then layer on everything else. Start in the right place, and good things will follow.
A final piece of advice
And if I may, my advice to the audience was to get good at prompting. Think clarity, context and constraints: the more specific and illuminating your prompt is to exactly what you are asking for the better. Imagine you are asking a very smart human to push themselves to answer a question. The more you practice the better you’ll get: and the more you’ll stand out from the crowd.
Altogether an excellent day. Kudos to the entire PropTech Denmark team for another great symposium.
Visual: Nikki Schmidt, Big Brain Agency
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