How new PropTech digital platforms and business models change the real estate sector and society?

Digital technology in the form of hardware and software has become an integral part of our daily lives. We use it for our private life, work, and education. It has greatly affected how we live and interact with the world around us.

Many organizations use numerous digital technologies — often even hundreds or even thousands of different hardware and software products — which in their complexity causes challenges in how they manage the technology in the organization.

In the real estate and construction sector, additional challenges arise from the fact that the industry is fragmented and buildings are equipped with different information systems.A promising solution to the challenges could be the use of digital platforms and a better understanding of the business models.

Digital platforms are digital technologies that form information technology infrastructures that are widely accepted and used across an industry.

They build an ecosystem that has a wide network of actors and combine users and producers of data and services (e.g. asset management platforms, mobility platforms, access control systems, built environment user experience, location-based communication platforms, or energy optimization platforms).Digital platforms are important, as they have the potential to solve issues related to the fragmented nature of the sector and fragmented technology management landscape – they bring people together.

The industry and academia have discussed many digital technologies as promising such as building information modelling (BIM) or digital twin.

They seem to have the potential to become widely used platforms in the real estate and construction sector.However, they have paid less attention to business model innovation – describing the development and implementation of platforms or how an organization creates, delivers, and captures economic, social, or environmental value.

Also the understanding of service innovation – typical of many new digital platforms in the real estate and construction sector – is often missing.

This is crucial since the community may not have an understanding of why the new service is helpful.Thus, the purpose of this project is (1) to increase understanding of the operational logic of digital platforms and business models in the built environment sector, and (2) to promote the adoption of digital platforms by identifying challenges and opportunities related to technology and business models.