Results:

Innovating to boldly drive change

Transforming real estate through data analytics, agile experimentation and proptech investment

Our innovation pathway

Property’s transformational turning point

At Investa, we have always believed in the power of innovation. Harnessing the potential of technology, data and analytics to unlock new opportunities for real estate investment, development and operations. Reimagining how people experience our workplaces and communities. Empowering our decision-making, driving even greater operational efficiency and returns on investment.

We’re now ready to take the next leap forward in our innovation strategy. Strategically investing in our people, platforms, experiences and partners – augmenting our human expertise and capabilities with data, artificial intelligence and analytics.

Innovation strategy 3.0

Building on strong innovation foundations

Next-level innovation, through advanced analytics, training and partnerships.

Innovation has been the core to our culture and operations for more than two decades. We have led the way in real estate advanced analytics and our award-winning in-house training empowers our people to drive change across all areas of the business.

Now we are ready to double down on continuous innovation, experimenting with new ways to overcome small pain points while pursuing new blue sky opportunities. We’ll collaborate with external technology partners in new ways, building an innovation ecosystem to realise the full potential of new technologies.

To create places our tenants love and properties that deliver outperformance for our investors and partners, our innovation strategy has four focus areas:

Leaders in Data Intelligence
Capturing the true value of the millions of data points our business and buildings generate, we will make more informed investment decisions and optimise asset performance – faster.
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Unlocking our capacity as intrapreneurs and embedding our culture of continuous, iterative innovation through Investa’s Innovation Institute. Because innovation is everyone’s role.
Tailored Human Experience (HX)
Reimagining the way we design and renew our spaces by putting our customers first, and helping to reduce complexity and friction.
Strategic Innovation Investment
Becoming the preferred investment partner for innovative emerging PropTech companies, with flexible investment pathways to help commercialise opportunities.

Sixty martin place internal spiral stairs

INVESTA’S INNOVATION CAPABILITIES

Entrepreneurial capacity, in-house platforms and strategic partnerships

We are investing in the platforms, tools and skills our business needs to be fighting fit for future growth. These include:

Data, AI and machine learning

Data, AI and machine learning

Our smart buildings provide hundreds of thousands of data points, which can be analysed through machine learning capabilities to inform more accurate decisions. This includes models to identify potential build to rent acquisitions and development opportunities – taking into account on and off market opportunities, real time sales, demographic and transaction data, and DA zoning changes.

For example, in partnership with data and analytics firm Spark Beyond, we developed 360AI - a platform with 90 data models to quickly identify suitable assets for Investa funds.

This technology:

saves Investa Capital Transactions time
mitigates the risks of cognitive bias, and
ensures we can move quickly on the right investment opportunities.

360AI won Best Internal Innovation in the 2020 AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies List Awards.

In-house innovation training

In-house innovation training

Investa’s Innovation Institute is our dedicated internal academy, designed to give everyone in the business the skills, knowledge and mindsets to innovate in a data-led world.

Its constantly evolving curriculum, delivered with external partners including academics, VCs and start-ups, helps us embed our culture of continuous, iterative innovation.

Integrated building technology

Integrated building technology

Investa is future proofing new and existing assets with IoT devices, sensors, digital twins and integrated networks.

These connected buildings provide better access to amenities, services and information for our tenants – as well as operational flexibility and efficiency.

Capabilities

Investment frameworks

Investment frameworks

Capabilities

Investa’s Early Partner & Customer Program matches emerging proptech companies to business pain points, providing a flexible investment model that enables us to allocate resources and deliver ROI.

Awards

A recognised leader in innovation and technology

Best Internal Innovation

AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies List Awards - Best Internal Innovation - 360AI (2020)

L&D Program finalist

Australian HR Awards – Best Learning & Development Program finalist - Investa’s Innovation Institute (2021)

2nd in Australia WELL ratings

WELL ratings 2nd in Australia and globally - Investa portfolio and OIPP

3rd in Australia WELL ratings

WELL ratings 3rd in Australia and globally – ICPF portfolio

Case studies

Digital twin technology powers building optimisation

Investa captures live data from 12 properties across more than 30 systems – over 400,000 data points in total – to inform building upgrade decisions, and identify opportunities to reduce costs and improve tenant comfort.

For example, Sixty Martin Place is equipped with over 22,000 sensors that collect a huge amount of real-time data. This allows Investa to compare and benchmark performance across different assets, and track and manage energy consumption with greater accuracy.

This innovative platform has evolved from a partnership with global proptech Willow in 2016.

Case studies

Award-winning in-house training

Over 100 employees completed training with Investa’s Innovation Institute in its first year – initially focusing on human-centred design and other innovation fundamentals for commercial real estate. In its second year, the Institute focused on data literacy to develop capability in data handling, analytics, prototyping, testing, and storytelling with data.

By 2021, 75% of Investa employees had been upskilled through the Investa Innovation Institute

This unique program, unlike anything else in the real estate sector, helps all employees develop the skills to experiment with new ways to solve problems. Eight out of 10 participants say they are likely to recommend the Data Literacy program to a colleague, and the Institute was an Australian HR Award Finalist in 2021 for Best Learning & Development Program.

60 Martin Pl Innovation Institute Day X Hackathon 2022 (30)

Case studies

Day (X) Hackathon puts data skills to work

In August 2022, Investa’s Innovation Institute hosted ‘Day (X),’ in partnership with data science platform Exomnia. The full day hackathon brought together 30 collaborators from Investa’s research, leasing, property management, build to rent, customer experience and marketing teams. Three decision intelligence dashboards were created, with 171 new panels – powered by 90 live data sets and 40 million rows of data.

This allowed us to automate and centralise external data sources to significantly improve efficiencies, reduce anomalies, and allow adaptive research based on real time data. It also expanded access to live leasing data including real time rental listing and executed lease data.

60 Martin Pl Innovation Institute Day X Hackathon 2022 (5)

Case studies

Arealytics partnership crowd-sources commercial real estate data

Through our Early Adopter Partner Program, we collaborated with commercial real estate data start-up Arealytics to launch a crowd-sourced Lease Exchange to overcome the issue of limited lease data in Melbourne. The industry contributes data in exchange for access, making it easier, faster and more affordable to generate validated data sets for everyone. As more people contribute, the more valuable – and validated - the collective data becomes.

This is a true industry utility data set that allows us to see new patterns of behaviour and demand by layering in other relevant data sets.

Case studies

Benchmarking our workplace experiences

Investa uses the International WELL Building Institute (IWBL) building standards to measure, certify and monitor our assets and communities to ensure we contribute to a healthier built environment.

In 2021, Investa became one the first Australian real estate investment trusts (REIT) to receive the WELL Health Safety seal for its portfolio. Our overall portfolio ranked second in Australia and globally.

This third-party verification tool assesses air, water, indoor light, thermal comfort, mental wellbeing and other attributes – helping us embed innovative health and wellbeing strategies in future CAPEX, operational and development plans.