MIPIM is dead, long live MIPIM?

Well, who’d have thought it, heh? After all the talk of MIPIM losing its mojo, MIPIM 2023 turned out to be surprisingly decent, for BE News, anyway.

The perfect weather helped, as did flying the flag for our own outfit for the first time. There’s nothing like having a bit of skin in the game to make you up your game! But the main reason I think it worked this year is that everyone who attended had made a conscious decision to go and once they got there, they made a concerted effort to make the most of it.

We certainly did. As well as hosting a lunch on the important new Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard initiative being spearheaded by David Partridge, I chaired a dinner debate titled: ‘BE Entrepreneurs: the originals versus the new wave’. Highlights from both will be appearing on the BE News website shortly, but I can tell you now that both were really meaningful discussions that focused on tangibles rather than hypotheticals.

At the lunch, the goal was to find out what stakeholders and interested parties wanted from the standard – and what they didn’t want – and Partridge was sent away with a long ‘to do’ list. The entrepreneurs who attended the dinner were equally focused on the prize: in their case, to beat the other side in a debate between the originals and the new wave – well, they were initially, anyway. When they started sharing their inspirational stories and debating the quintessential traits of an entrepreneur and how they had changed, the consensus was they hadn’t, and the two ‘sides’ became one.

The similarities were striking. All had spotted gaps in the market and were relentlessly creative, contrarian, driven and resilient. All were hardwired to take calculated risks – never gambles – and to chase the highs of success but accept of the lows of failure (without which the highs wouldn’t exist). None – and this was a surprise to me – were rampant egos or driven solely by the desire to make money. They all came across as humble, respectful and genuinely interested in hearing the different perspectives of their fellow entrepreneurs.

That may be because, as one of them remarked afterwards, they rarely get to be with other entrepreneurs – a group that apparently now includes me. At the end of the debate, one guest said: “You do realise you are one of us, don’t you? Welcome to the club.” Truth is, I knew I was technically an entrepreneur, having set up BE News, but I didn’t – and still don’t – think of myself as one, even though I tick all the above boxes.

Another box that I – and most of the bona fide entrepreneurs – tick is the diversity box. For some, it was about social mobility, gender or ethnicity (I tick all three boxes), but everyone in the room was an outlier in one way or another. They see things that others don’t see, or see them in a different way. That’s why they are so successful – and it is as true of the new wave as of the originals, which is why the ‘battle’, such that it was, ended in a dead heat.

Encouragingly, it wasn’t just the entrepreneurs who exuded dynamism, intellectual curiosity and determination. The panellists participating in the two panel debates I chaired at this year’s MIPIM, one on measuring impact, the other on retrofitting, did too, and I left Cannes feeling cautiously optimistic about the industry’s future. Yes, there were moments when there seemed to be more white, middle-aged men milling around than usual, but overall, there were more people from ethnic backgrounds than I recall seeing in the past and the gender balance was good.

If only MIPIM were not so costly – in too many cases, prohibitively so – to attend. It’s in real danger of becoming exclusive rather than inclusive and that surely cannot be the way forward.