Zpryme Trendz Volume VIII

Amazon just invested in a Prefab home startup. The concept of adaptable homes is nothing new. The Jetsons, which first aired in the 1960s,  had homes with a bunch of features that looks outdated in today’s world. But as our cities rocket into the future, our homes are still being built and fashioned as they have for the better part of the last few centuries. Apart from the push for more energy efficient products in the home, the processes, methods, and shapes of the homes are still mostly the same. Some French construction companies have embraced the concept of the ‘Grow Home’ and are building at a rapid pace in many parts of France. These homes are pre-fabricated, nothing new, and delivered to the plot of land to be assembled.

The prefab homes cater to the needs of a younger generation of homeowner that cannot afford the expensive homes that are now common in most desirable parts of major cities in the world. But these new/first time homeowners still want homes to raise their children in, or rather homes to raise their child in. The decision to move into smaller homes and the decision to have fewer kids are both based on the economic reality of the situation, it simply takes more money to manage these things nowadays. The average weekly childcare cost increased from just $84 in 1985 to $143 in 2011, according to the US Census Bureau.

 

 

But there is an even more underlying social reason that is leading to these changes: these respondents believe they have a choice. They believe they have a choice in having kids. They believe they have a choice in deciding the type of employer they work for. They believe they have a choice in whether they work by the traditional metrics of work or not. They believe they have a choice in which companies they spend their money with. They believe their products should be delivered to their homes within hours of the order. And they are now starting to believe that their homes should morph to adapt to their lives even when they make the choices that seem traditional to those of us who might not consider ourselves of this generation. Their homes can serve as live-work spaces and their technology enables that to be the case.

To cater to these required changes in the homes as the lives of this new type of homeowner change, companies are providing 3D home designs that are dynamic and modify based on possible future variables, composition, lifestyle or budget that the homeowner can indicate at the time of purchasing the home. For example, if the homeowner decides that the home should become a 2 bed place with a large living room instead of the 3 bed space it was when it was purchased, the build of the home can be panelized or modularized in a way to facilitate these future changes.

The traditional utility home would have utility lines run through the walls and laid out to ensure proximity to the necessary outlets for power, water and heat. In the new homes, a single line runs through the home configured in a way to ensure that, regardless of the changes that might happen to the home down the line, there will be no costly utility updates required. All this is factored into the cost of the home. All this because of the recognition that consumers are not a static entity with one-dimensional needs that we can continue to serve with the same approach.All of this at a time when news of Amazon working with construction companies to embed Alexa in the homes.

We should truly be worried as an industry. These might all seem like disparate situations but, as I share in the video below, the accumulation of all these small changes is what amounts to true disruption. How do you want to respond to this? We’ll be holding the first workshop ‘Using The Supermind (AI + HI) For Corporate Strategic Planning’ in San Antonio on Nov 20th. We’ll focus on how to gather all the insights and signals, mine tour structured and unstructured data from within and without your company to determine your strategic plans, possibilities and actions. Reach out to Seyi.fabode@zpryme.com or Jason.rodriguez@zpryme.com

Till next week
-Seyi Fabode