A Changing MIPIM Reveals New Opportunities
#Week10, if your company is anything like Innesco, was spent making those last-minute preparations for MIPIM. With events, panel appearances, press briefings, lunches and catch-up drinks to fit into the diary, attention can sometimes be diverted from the conference schedule itself. If the random encounters and serendipitous meetings often underpin just how successful MIPIM is for us all, it is the programme of speakers, panels and debates that set the tone.
Take a look at some of the speakers and sessions in this year’s schedule, and the days of “offices, retail, industrial” in traditional locations dominating proceedings are clearly behind us. The keynote address is from Sanna Marin, the former Prime Minister of Finland, with other Government-level speakers focused on urban regeneration, housing, inward investment and enterprise.
Notable sessions include insights into net zero, sustainable development, infrastructure and transport, geopolitics, artificial intelligence, and adapting to demographic change. Panels are looking at everything from sport-based development to data centres and giga-projects to life sciences, with locations under discussion incorporating emerging cities, regions and countries among the usual suspects from the US and Europe. Eagle-eyed readers of the conference programme will spot two members of Innesco’s team – Dan Innes and Simon Stretch – chairing panels on the Geo Focus and UK stages respectively.
The changing face of MIPIM was discussed during the recording of the latest episode of Innesco's podcast The I Word, which will be available next week ahead of MIPIM. The guests – Jennifer Hartley, director of Invest Newcastle, Katie Pattison, managing principal, marketing at architectural practice WATG, and James Turner, group managing director of Sierra Balmain – run the rule over this year’s event, the topics that are dominating their conversations and the conference’s ongoing relevance to the real estate community.
Perhaps most notable from the episode is the discussion around sectors that would once have been clumped together as “alternatives”, but are now asset classes in their own right. Life sciences, healthcare and hotels all feature, alongside the splintering of residential sub-sectors and the ongoing need – often in repurposed forms – of office, retail and industrial space to cater for tomorrow’s knowledge-based economy. And on International Women’s Day, it was particularly heartening to hear from the panellists about the strength of female representation in their MIPIM delegations, yet another facet of the event that has changed for the better since its early days in the 1990s.
It is a fascinating listen, even if we do so say so ourselves, providing an opportunity to hear from a range of voices about their experiences and expectations not just for the annual pilgrimage to Cannes, but for the wider market as a whole. Whether it’s learning about how a body such as Invest Newcastle goes about attracting human and financial capital to a specific region, gaining insight into WATG’s work in new markets and hospitality sectors, or hearing about Sierra Balmain’s strategic views, there is plenty in there for everyone. So subscribe through the link below for some perfect listening as you stow your hand luggage, browse the in-flight magazine and brace yourself for Cannes.