Ever since I accepted the position of Director of Consumer Innovations a few weeks ago, I’ve been paying a little more attention to the concept of innovation. Innovation seems to imply something more than simple “ideas”, and mean something much closer to a new way of thinking. While flying to LA two weeks ago, I was happy to see BusinessWeek take on the topic of innovation until I realized that now I’m involved involved in two fields that will quite possible suffer the Curse of the BusinessWeek Cover: Blogging (Blogs Will Change Your Business) and Innovation (The World’s Most Innovative Companies). (I don’t think their recent cover on real estate, Buyer (and Seller) Beware, counts since they seem to advocate running away from this insane industry, whereas I’m jumping in!. 😉 )
This ramble on Innovation is meant to introduce a series of innovation awards that Inman is going to announce at their Real Estate Connect 2006 in San Francisco.
Here are the categories Inman has included and the sites that I would nominate (Do I need to mention that this is a very biased list?).
Most Innovative Real Estate Blog
- Rain City Guide. First to figure out a way to bring a group of real estate professionals together to market themselves by providing unique and interesting content.
Best Business Models
- Redfin. Like it or hate it, someone was going to light a fire under the bums of real estate agents to ensure that agents are providing value to tech-savvy clients.
Most Innovative Real Estate Data Site
- Zillow wins this hand’s down just for their uber-confidence in a complete data-centric solution.
Most Innovative Technology
- It looks like Google Earth won this last year. If Google Earth won out over Google Maps, then Inman should “right” a clear “wrong” and give this award to Google Maps this year. Google Earth may have more “wow” factor, but nothing sparked more innovation in real estate in this past year than Google Maps.
Most Innovative Mortgage Companies/Services
- I’m drawing a blank. Todd, who would you nominate?
Most Innovative Brokers/Franchises/Realtor
- Again, I’m drawing a blank. Ardell, any ideas?
Most Innovative Web Service
- I’m not sure what this means… However, if I had to describe the innovation that will most change real estate over the next year, I’d keep it simple and vote RSS.
Most Innovative Media Site
- No one site should get this award. Instead it should go out to all the real estate bloggers who are creating their own diversified media through blogging (Inman included! 😉 ).
Best Rental/ New Home Online Service
- I’m really not too familiar with this category, but I’ve seen some of the stuff that Move is developing, and it seems quite impressive. I’ll hold off judgment for the time being, but welcome your suggestions.
Although, I completely agree with most of the picks, I have to say that “Most Innovative Technology” should be a tie between Microsoft Virtual Earth & Google Maps.
I’m not saying Google Maps isn’t a worthy nominee, I’m merely saying that Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team deserves it as much as the Google guys do. Why?
Microsoft shipped the first image tile-based aerial photography web application way back in June 1998. Back then, it was called TerraServer. Google deserves a lot of credit for adding some much needed DHTML & AJAX to improve the user expeirence, however I can’t give them all the credit since they merely took Microsoft’s pre-existing TerraServer ideas to the next level.
And shortly afterward, the Microsoft Virtual Earth team returned the favor by taking Google Maps ideas to next level, by combining maps on top of satellite images, supporting keyboard events & mouse wheel events for map navigation (both of which, Google has since copied after MS released it). Microsoft has also added low level aerial imagery from Pictometry (which Zillow is now using on their site), and street level imagery (similar to the Blockview images that were first done by A9).
Although Google maps is an impressive web application that has done much to advance the state of the art of web mapping, I’d say that based on Microsoft’s past and present innovations in this space, they’ve earned this award as much as the G-men have.
Best Business Model: I can’t say that Redfin is “innovative” because it is basically the same business model Zip Realty tried intially, but it failed. So it is more of a second try at it, industrywise. Redfin is the “IT” place, not because of its business model, but because of the technology of the search feature.
So along the same lines, I’d have to say that the Most Innovative Broker is, and has been, Zip Realty. They Incorporate the technology of a House Values with a Brokerage firm and use it to supply the agents with leads. They include the consumer discount aspect on both the seller and the buyer side. They treat agents as employees without paying them a salary (cool if you can get away with it.) They have more than a few weaknesses, but clearly Zip Realty is the most innovative, as they include many of the most innovative concepts, all under one roof.
The question is can any “discount” brokerage become as successful as a traditional company. Jury’s still out on that one.
Best Business Model: I can’t say that Redfin is “innovative” because it is basically the same business model Zip Realty tried intially, but it failed. So it is more of a second try at it, industrywise. Redfin is the “IT” place, not because of its business model, but because of the technology of the search feature.
So along the same lines, I’d have to say that the Most Innovative Broker is, and has been, Zip Realty. They Incorporate the technology of a House Values with a Brokerage firm and use it to supply the agents with leads. They include the consumer discount aspect on both the seller and the buyer side. They treat agents as employees without paying them a salary (cool if you can get away with it.) They have more than a few weaknesses, but clearly Zip Realty is the most innovative, as they include many of the most innovative concepts, all under one roof.
The question is can any “discount” brokerage become as successful as a traditional company. Jury’s still out on that one.
Robbie, I really appreciate that you’re a Microsoft man, through and through! The world needs more people like you! 😉
Well, Google gets enough free advertising from your blog, I wanted to make sure credit is given where credit is due. 😉
RE: Redfin, perhaps Redfin will offer you a duplex with your sushi in 2007, to out innovative Zip?
I agree with Robbie, Except I don’t think it is a tie… I think Live local is an amazing product for real estate professionals and should easily take the crown for the time being.
I mean Local Live… whoops…