2020 | AMERICATALYST : ENTROPY, SURVIVING THE NEW ABNORMAL

The housing industry suffers from a pathologically short attention span.

We predict that almost 40% of today’s companies in the housing ecosystem will not survive over the next 5 years.

Housing and its finance plays a disproportionately crucial role in our personal lives and is a pillar of the global economy. Despite this overarching role, firms throughout the housing industry tend to plan short-term strategies even though the greatest change in the world today is the pace of it.

If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s.

Informally, we polled 14 CEOs who are market leaders in their particular sector of the housing ecosystem. We found that their short-term strategies were three quarters out, and their long-term strategies were six quarters into the future. Contrast this with firms like Google, Salesforce and Amazon. Their strategies extend – at a minimum – 10 years into the future. Today, we see mass consolidation, disruption and disaggregation throughout the industry. Tomorrow, we see many firms failing altogether because they were not agile enough to anticipate changes ahead. Universally, if you don’t have a strategy, chances are you’re part of someone else’s.

In today’s world, things can get very bad, very quickly.

Although most believe that we have moved beyond the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, we believe that we have not yet seen the full extent of its socio-economic and political impact. Complacency in our industry has returned and yet the acceleration and Interconnectedness in all areas of human activity are reaching critical limits. The immediate challenges before us include inevitable failures in our environment, as well as the economic, technological, social, and institutional systems which define our future. We are facing a systems breakdown, and our generation will be the first to experience it.

On the other hand, where there’s chaos, there’s profit.

Over the past 20 years, some of the most successful firms have emerged to address specific problems and/or as a result
of innovation following particular crises. We believe that with effort to gain foresight into the future, astute strategists
can begin to create new business models and create strategies to capitalize on upcoming change.

If you plan for the future, you are more likely to survive it.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.

While no one can predict the future, we can prepare for it. Our industry urgently needs an entirely new approach to
anticipate and prepare for the inevitable sudden and dramatic disruptions throughout the housing ecosystem. With
active, high-energy collaboration and teamwork among leaders driving the industry, we have the opportunity and the
power to create a sustainable future. To get there, we need a new way of thinking about our industry in the context of the
unprecedented challenges that lie ahead.

AMERICATALYST 2020 | ENTROPY: SURVIVING THE NEW ABNORMAL

AMERICATALYST 2020 | ENTROPY is a two-day, invitation-only peer-to-peer think tank that brings together all of the
primary constituents and competitors throughout the housing industry to candidly discuss and debate the most
important trends, threats and opportunities to the industry in the near future. Not for the faint of heart, the event
challenges mainstream thinking and current business models, frames opportunities and problems in an entirely different
way, and proposes new ways of thinking about our industry and its future. We’ll provide you with the information and
concepts to change the way in which you think about your business to ensure its future. And rather than getting you to
the ball, we’ll help you anticipate where the ball is going to be. Our best advice?

Don’t Follow The Leader.
Be One.