I was asked to write a post for the recently launched www.propeagle.com webiste. Focusing on commercial property, in all its glory, Propeagle, offers anyone working in that space the opportunity to connect, inform and generally hang-out.

I took as my theme the word ‘space’, and applied it to the concept of ‘property’ and ‘ideas’.

Here’s what I wrote…

If you work in and around commercial property you’ll be familiar with the concept of ‘space’.  You’re often in a position to measure it, visualise it, monetize it and then sell or let it. Space can be, and often is a commodity.

Hold that notion for a moment and then apply the world space to ‘ideas’. Ideas similarly occupy spaces, which likewise can be measured, visualised, etc. And increasingly in today’s connected world, idea-spaces are traded in a similar way to the physical spaces you deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Propeagle represents a new ideas-space for the world of commercial property.

With advances in cognitive science research, and the ubiquitous rise of the Internet, it appears that we increasingly make sense of the world through recourse to a vast array of culturally and socially embed ideas-spaces.  The classification and identification of these ideas-spaces is perhaps best represented by that idea-space, par excellence, Wikipedia, which is its self a product of the rapidly expanding social media revolution and its goals of greater participation and greater connectivity.

And there-in lays the key for us all. Namely, having the ability to connect with and synthesise a  vast array of knowledge (contained in countless idea-spaces) that we now all have access to.

For those involved in, or seeking to innovate their business – and let’s face it, we’re all at threat from being left obsolescent - any crucial breakthrough is likely to come from the combining of distinct idea spaces into new products or services.

It is no coincidence that the ‘mash-up’ has become the default model for today’s breakthrough products. Take Facebook, for example, which took the decades-old concept of the ‘Yearbook’ beloved by generations of US students and combined it with another ideas-space occupied by computing geeks focused on creating increased use of the web as a social tool, whose potential was first witnessed during the early days of Napster.

The mobile phone application, Foursquare, combines the principles of satnav with social networking and a rewards mechanism; all underpinned by an open source approach to developing the service.

Often, the new idea-space that’s created leads to such fundamental changes in perspective that the old ways of doing things suddenly looks, well, old. The music industry is a prime example, and for my money, recruitment is going the same way.

Which leads me on to (or back) to the commercial property space. Which of its existing idea spaces, when combined with new, imaginative insights, will come to the forefront and make a huge difference in how business is done?

Changes are already underway, and perhaps seem so incremental as to appear un-noticed  and therefore routine.  But the rise of Facebook (and the age group now referred to as the Facebook generation), Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr are all making inroads into how business is being conducted. And characterised as being less formal, and more transparent.

A new generation of sites, such as this one, PropEagle, seeks to take the best of these new ways of doing business and combine them with the kind of breakthrough ideas that are only likely to appear through facilitating the connection of limitless day-to-day conversations. When this starts to happen it’s as if the space of ideas thinks for us. 

And that’s when you get smart space. The kind of space we all want to be part of.