Last week during a panel session at WorkTech San Francisco at 485 Jessie, JLL Managing Director Peter Miscovich asked LiquidSpace CEO Mark Gilbreath how corporate real estate managers can balance their increasingly complex corporate real estate demands with the also increasingly complex supply landscape (traditional office leasing, coworking, office centers, telework, virtual offices, hotels). The answer was that traditional office leasing model simply cannot address all of the requirements being put upon CRE leaders (like mandates to reduce cost, increase resiliency, support diverse work styles and preferences to aid in hiring and retention). Rather, the sustainable workplace solution will lie increasingly in balancing traditional office with the use of workspace that employees access and pay for, when and where they need to.

The good news today is there's a diverse and rapidly expanding ecology of professional office environments offering their space on demand—coworking spaces, major hotel chains, office business centers, libraries and even private companies—looking to monetize excess space. In five years the typical corporate “office” will be as much these transactional spaces, purchased by the hour, day or month, as it is traditional office. Individual employees will operate as their own architect, space programmer and purchasing manager, in finding the best environment and workspace for each workday and task. And, we should expect a land rush of companies companies rejecting long-term commitments to space.