Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2016 | Page 10

Photo: Pekka Rousi

to be perceived as phony is to do something
antithetical to your heritage, to repudiate
who you are. So you must understand that
heritage – your origin plus your history –
to figure out the key elements to bring forth
and stay true to.”
Pine adds that for development projects
this means not just the company itself, but
the locale of the development, for authentic places must be “rooted in the ground”.
“In being what you say you are, the
easiest way to be perceived as phony here
is to advertise something you are not, which
companies do all the time.” In fact, Pine is in
the habit of telling companies to stop advertising, and, instead, to start creating places
where people can directly experience who
they are.
“In real estate, therefore, you must recognise the primacy of place – the venue plus
the event that happens there. So recognise
it is not just about the buildings or the environs; it’s about the experience that real, live,
individual people have in those venues.”

Smart Me Up
But how exactly does the digital component
fit to all of this? After all, Smart Cities are
a rising theme in Finland and around the
world – are we heading for ‘Smart Experience Economy’? – Pine reveals that he has
been working with some colleagues in the
MIT Media Lab on this very same issue.
He feels that Smart City initiatives are very
much about the lived experience people have
in the city and how it can be made more
engaging, of greater value, and more personal. To make it work, a Smart City has to
“go big” on experience, but there’s another
force at work here, as well.
Pine explains: Smart City resonates
very strongly with ideas arising from his
first book, Mass Customization (1992). In
his mind, this is exactly what the Smart
City must do – mass customise the infrastructure, environments and city services to
deliver unique value to the individual citizen and visitor.
And while mass customising a good
turns it into a service and mass customising
a service turns it into an experience, we still
can’t get away from Experience Economy
even if we wanted to, it seems.
“That’s where the Smart City should
really be aimed – at mass customising everything possible to help citizens and visitors lead the most productive lives possible, contribute to the quality of life of others, and achieve their dreams and aspirations,” Pine sums up.

Get Real
Not surprisingly, this issue g ]