In this installment of ‘PropTalk: Insights from Real Estate Experts,’ we speak to Ricardo Rosa, the Director of Innovation at Sonae Sierra. In Ricardo’s role, he works at the cross section of shopping centers and innovation.
Ricardo previously worked in a variety of strategic marketing roles before shifting into the real estate industry. Since then, he has carved out a permanent role with the property development company, focused entirely on innovation. With experience in the retail space as well as the real estate industry, Ricardo brings a wealth of knowledge for how to help the two work together. As well as an understanding of worthy endeavors for property developers.
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NextRivet: Given your time working with some notable retail brands earlier in your career, such as L’Oreal, Unilever and Sumol+Compal, and then spending the previous thirteen years working with shopping centers across Europe, do you find companies on the property side more open to innovation compared to the retail side? Or vice versa?
This is a fantastic question and one that doesn’t really have a straightforward and easy answer. I think most CPG companies are naturally connected to the consumer and live in an extremely competitive landscape where product innovation and marketing innovation are paramount to thrive… or even to survive. So I believe I was part of a lot of innovations during those years and those moments really launched my views on how that can be the driver for success in today’s marketplaces.
Companies within the real estate market have a completely different outlook on these matters. Their “bread & butter” is not as close to the end customer. But, they still need to evolve the business model and to find new growth avenues when faced with disruptions to the consumer retail journey. The ones we have recently lived through, and are also currently experiencing, have made these companies more receptive to change than they previously have been.
If you were to ask me this question a decade ago, I would’ve told you CPG companies were the most innovative by virtue of market pressures. Today, I believe Property companies are changing their ways of doing business compared to CPG companies.
NextRivet: In your role at Sonae Sierra as Director of Innovation, you deal with a lot of different stakeholders, from investment funds to ESG managers. This is typical across the commercial real estate (CRE) industry. How do you ensure the consumer/end customer stays front of mind while integrating technology?
One of the characteristics of this business is its extreme stakeholder complexity. Only people that have lived the day-to-day life of Real Estate companies really understand what I mean by this. So, this means that keeping a clear consumer focus is far from granted or easy.
You must keep going back to the basics, prototyping and testing solutions in real-life scenarios in rapid succession. Test & learn. Rinse & repeat! That’s the only way you can keep anchored to the end customer, the people that will really determine the success of your initiatives. A “pilot culture” is something I’ve instilled at Sonae Sierra as a determinant of success. So when we do get to the big launches, a lot of the tech and the concepts have been stress-tested IRL, with real consumers.
NextRivet: Having significant experience within CRE, what do you think the impact of AI has been in the industry? What do you foresee the greatest long-term impact being?
I think the impact is only now starting. It wasn’t one of the first sectors to be impacted but the opportunities are huge. We have developed AI solutions around Sustainability, Energy Consumption and Corporate Communication. But this is just scratching the surface.
I would say we can expect a huge impact on the way we exchange ideas with our customers, at scale (that’s from an external perspective) but also on internal processes like Legal and Operations (to give also an internal view on the impact). As a general rule, CRE companies are sitting on large datasets that can be used for a lot of different purposes. Having the tools to bring together disparate data will have a big impact in how we operate in the next few years.
NextRivet: Working within CRE prior to, during, and after, the COVID-19 pandemic, have you noticed the mindset and appetite for innovation shift in the real estate industry?
I think so and I think this is true for CRE but also for retail companies (our everyday partners). The consumer journeys were heavily impacted in ways that were not that easy to forecast. When the world closed, everybody thought that would be the big break for e-commerce, but the consumer has evolved in very different ways. It was not easy to forecast how the consumer would come back roaring to real-life experiences, to being with communities and to interacting in real life, across so many different scenarios. The changes were great and will continue to reverberate in the next few years. We have a consumer that loves to change and will continue to chase whatever it is that makes his or her life that little bit better and more interesting. It is up to us, in the sector, to be part of the solution.
We have been speaking about placemaking for a long time, but this has come to life in myriad new ways after the pandemic. And the change keeps coming. It is exactly this characteristic of constant change that has increased the appetite for risk and for innovation in the CRE sector, as I said before
NextRivet: Last question, what keeps you up at night?
First, I sleep very well at night! But my main worries are centered in making sure we keep the consumer at the center of our innovation efforts. As I said before, there are a lot of stakeholders in this sector, but we must strive, always, to develop solutions that make sense to our end-customer. Without them, the ecosystem doesn’t work and the flywheel doesn’t move! We must take into account all players in the ecosystem, but we must keep the consumer at the center of everything. My major worry is that we might let our guard down on this – we mustn’t let it happen!