The generational tech clash reshaping offices.

Younger occupiers live in a world where every interaction is logged and used to make the next one smoother. Many CRE portfolios don’t.

That gap — between data-native expectations and analogue operating realities — is where the next decade of office value will be won or lost. In a recent Insights by Blueprint feature, our CPTO James Shannon lays out what this clash means for operators and why modernisation is less about “selling data” and more about using it to run better buildings.

What Gen Z expects inside buildings.

Gen Z assumes the workplace “knows” them — preferred rooms, team locations, busy vs. quiet areas — and that access, booking, and payment just work from a phone. Plastic cards and manual processes feel like relics. As James puts it: “They want to be able to book a meeting room as easily as tapping to buy a sandwich.” Mobile access, digital wallets, real-time data, and frictionless movement are the baseline, not a perk.

Why CRE changes slowly (and why that matters).

Real estate moves on long physical and cultural cycles. Older assets may lack the infrastructure to capture data; leadership may be cautious about acting on it. James’s framing: “Real estate takes generations to change… the physical assets take time to age and be refreshed.” That creates a “double whammy”: analogue assumptions plus lagging portfolios meeting a generation that expects data-rich experiences.

The risk and the opportunity.

This isn’t about turning building data into a product you sell. CRE is too idiosyncratic and fragmented for large, homogeneous datasets. The durable value is internal: using information to sharpen decisions and operations — from reducing emergency repairs to improving tenant communications and retention. Think predictive maintenance, standardised procurement, smarter startup/shutdown schedules, and clearer service-level visibility. These are the indirect monetisation routes that lift NOI today.

Where AI fits (practical, not hype).

AI is lowering the barrier to analytics and helping teams build lightweight internal tools — the “threshold for custom” has dropped dramatically. It’s enabling predictive maintenance from IoT signals and linking tenant-level issues to building-level root causes so operators can act before problems escalate. But human context still rules: assets are unique, and local knowledge won’t be automated away.

What you’ll learn in the article.

• The “generational tech clash” — how data-native expectations collide with analogue operating norms, and what “modernisation” really requires.

• Direct vs. indirect data monetisation — why selling data remains limited in CRE, and the operational use cases delivering returns now.

• From data consumption to data construction — why more operators are buying raw data or tapping APIs to build their own tools.

• AI’s practical wins — predictive maintenance, procurement standardisation, and tenant comms that actually reduce costs and churn.

• Governance realities — why privacy and consent remain top concerns across operators.

   

Read the full Insights by Blueprint piece featuring James Shannon here (note: requires subscription).