Susan Freeman Commercial Property Blog: A Tale of Two Conferences

Two entirely different but equally thought-provoking conferences I recently attended provided some interesting contrasts. The first was the London Business School (LBS) Global Leadership Summit on innovation and entrepreneurship. The second (with which readers will be more familiar) was the annual British Property Federation Conference.

The LBS event was upbeat and gave a global overview of the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship whereas the BPF (as the title ‘ Investment in the Age of Austerity’ suggests) was more downbeat especially after Professor David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, spoke on how he believes the government’s economic strategy is failing.

Yet despite their differences, I was struck by the following common themes:

Innovation: Unsurprisingly, there was no overlap between the audiences with the LBS event being a cosmopolitan, multi-sector affair as befits a leading international business school. Focusing on its theme of innovation it featured titans of global industry such as George Buckley, Chairman, President and CEO of 3M – internationally renowned for their innovative technology, who contended that you can teach innovation and overcome the fear of risk taking.

Surreally, Business Secretary Vince Cable was the keynote speaker at both events although with little common content. He seemed much more comfortable promoting innovative UK business to the LBS audience and highlighted the problems of lack of investment in research and development and the lack of access to business finance. He cited the benefits of the substantial investment by overseas companies into UK plc.

This has parallels with the high proportion of foreign investment into UK property, the significance of which was highlighted at the BPF conference by British Land CEO Chris Grigg, who indicated that only 30% of investors in British Land are UK based. At the BPF Dr Cable focused solely on property and planning related issues.

Availability of bank finance: Lloyds Bank was also represented at both events. Speaking at LBS on how corporates encourage innovation, charismatic Lloyds CEO, Antonio Horta-Orsario assured the audience that Lloyds has its customers’ interests at heart. He confirmed that Lloyds support 100,000 start ups a year although commenting that in "the Darwinian nature of commerce" many ideas don't succeed.  He sees UK companies as well-organised but working in silos.

Since companies are more innovative if they shed their layers of bureaucracy, Lloyds are de-layering and segmenting the market around customers rather than products. At the BPF another Lloyds director Truett Tate, speaking on the topic of restoring lending to small businesses, also assured his audience that Lloyds “treasure their relationships.” He insisted that they approve 8 out of 10 applications (although it was unclear how these statistics relate to property company loans). The applications they decline he put down to unsustainable business models and he asserted that these are the vocal 20% we hear complaining.

Where were the women?: A common factor of both events and all the more notable in the light of the recent Davies Report was how few women were on either platform. LBS had one female panellist out of 29 speakers whereas the BPF although fielding no female panellists scored with the Today Programme’s Sarah Montague who as chair once again did a masterly job of putting speakers on the spot with her probing questions.

Social media: As a recent Twitter convert, I noted the voluminous Twitter feed from the LBS audience with a number of panel questions raised from non attendees via Twitter. At the BPF event there were a mere handful of tweets from the organisers, me and the property journalists. As yet very few in the property sector have grasped the potential to gather useful information whilst promoting their businesses.

If according to 3M’s Buckley, you can teach innovation it may be worth investigating the LBS executive programmes ‘designed to turn ambitious executives into great (and innovative) business leaders’.

To see a video interviews with the key speakers at the BPF conference click here.