CoreNet Academic Challenge has opened the application for students from around the world to think creatively about a problem facing real estate professionals for renowned companies like Google, Duke Energy, AstraZeneca, Whirlpool, and many others. In exchange? Travel the world with an all-expense paid trip to one of our Global Summits in Asia or North America. Challenge your mind power by competing with your peers from around the world.

You and your teammates will engage in a contest with competing institutions from all over the globe. Your job is to address challenges like creating an employee experience that attracts millennials while retaining all other generations of employees; or reducing the gap between the speed of business and the typical speed of real estate.

Budding professionals welcome! We’re seeking your ingenuity and creativity. The competition is open to all students (undergraduate/graduate, full-time/part-time) who are currently registered at a recognized university.

A Student Competition
Student teams from universities and academic institutions around the world are invited to compete in an academic challenge whereby students will be asked to play the role of consultants in order to address a real-world issue facing companies around the globe: Identify the potential technology disruptors most likely to impact your client’s global corporate real estate footprint and create short-term and long-term strategies that put corporate real estate at the forefront of technological innovation – and enable business success.

Three teams, with a minimum of two (2) and a maximum of four (4) students each, will be selected to compete onsite at the CoreNet Global  Summit in Hong Kong, a professional conference for 800+ corporate real estate professionals from around the world, to be held in March 2019. Interested students will be required to submit a registration form and then respond to the challenge, as discussed herein.  Based on the quality of their submission, three teams will be invited to participate in the Final Round in Hong Kong.

The winning team will be awarded US$5,000.

The Challenge

Forward-thinking leaders of today are focused on the potential disruptors of tomorrow. What is the next big technological shakeup? Are corporate real estate professionals poised to predict, prepare, and participate in the changes that will affect the built environment? What impact will automation and human-machine cooperation, blockchain, artificial and anticipatory intelligence, and the internet of things have on the financial services, insurance, and manufacturing sectors? How will they transform the employee and customer experience – and what does it all mean for a company’s real estate portfolio?

Your client is a global leader in either the financial services, insurance, or the manufacturing sector. Identify the potential technology disruptors your team believes are most likely to impact your client’s global corporate real estate footprint. Then, create short-term and long-term strategies that put corporate real estate at the forefront of technological innovation – and enable business success.

CLARIFICATION: Once the three teams have been selected as finalists, they will be assigned a corporate profile including revenue, demographic, portfolio, and strategic information to help get them started (see the list on page 6 for a sampling of corporations that employ CoreNet Global members who generally attend the annual conference). Only teams selected as finalists will be shown the corporate profiles.