Construction, architecture, FF&E and all related stakeholders have seen their businesses drop 20%, 30%, 40% and some even more.

Some hope that this recession will be like others; hunker down, wait a while and then a new resurgence will emerge. But is this like recent recessions?

Here are some factors to consider:

1. There a large excess of inventory (buildings).
2. $3 trillion in financing is up for renewal this fall. It is estimated that 1/3 of these loans will default.
3. The credit rules have changed requiring more equity from developers by a factor of 5 and more. That means fewer more selective buildings.
4. The green steam roller is in full gear. Old buildings will be devalued and fewer, smaller buildings will be the new strategy.
5. Corporations are divesting of their fixed overhead and new mobile technologies will be the beneficiaries.
6. The warts of our industry are under full scrutiny and owners are demanding lower cost, higher quality green buildings.
7. There is a digital generation (70 million) who are stepping into the workplace and their agenda is not their mom and dad’s agenda.

There is a new normal coming. But I see little innovation (changed life style) in the wake of this industry wide near-death experience.

What will your business look like in 2010? What will your new markets be? Where will your new customers come from?

Here is a short clip from Dr. James Canton, author of Extreme Future.

Mindshift began as a simple dialogue about the current and future state of design and construction. It took a little time for our conversation to get beyond the thinking that the current state was a simple fact of life. When we looked outside our current system we arrived at the following conclusion:

Conventional design and construction is broken. It seems obvious. We all say it to ourselves and express our exasperation at our various networking gatherings. The odd dynamic is that when you get a room full of stakeholders together – for the first time – we talk as if we came from some alternative reality. Our projects all go smoothly, on-time and within budget.

I like to quote one of the executives from our first Mindshift gathering; “We all have good companies, good people and happy clients. We begin each projects with good intentions and high hopes. For some reason there is something about the system that gets in the way of all of our best efforts.”

The system clearly creates a lot of waste and conflict. That seems obvious. What was less obvious is that this waste and conflict is the result of a system that is fragmented, assumes distrust and is designed to defend against that distrust.

So here was our “aha!” We asked, “How do you create a system that assumes trust and is designed to foster it and lead toward integration?”

That is the story told in The Commercial Real Estate Revolution.

This video enhances the theme – innovation through developing a capacity for the obvious. This is Paul Bennet presenting at the TED conference.