Bruce Wells

Tell us about you, and your career journey

I am spearheading Matterport international growth,leading our strategy, vision, expansion and long-term goal of digitising the built world. With over 25 years’ of APAC business development and growth experience spanning a wide range of industry verticals and markets, I have worked within both APAC and global organizations, from large multinational firms to technology-enabled start-ups.

Before taking the helm at Matterport, I ran a business consultancy to help companies launch and expand across key Asian Markets, 8today Ltd. Prior to that, I helped lead the APAC launch and expansion of Vision Critical (now Alida), an insights-driven customer experience management platform as its President and Managing Director, as well as serving as VP and GM of Medallia, the leading SaaS provider of Customer Experience Management software. I was also divisional CEO of Synovate (now Ipsos) – a global leader in marketing research and analytics, and various engineering and technical leadership roles at Motorola.

I like to think of myself as a global entrepreneur, having started my first company in Asia in 1997. Although originally from New York, I have lived and worked in Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. I am results-focused with a passion for developing and driving growth strategies.Disrupting the status quo, motivating teams, cultivating creative business change, and driving business outcomes that provide differentiated and sustainable value for all stakeholders is my passion.

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In your opinion,what are the top 3 trends across the smart cities industry niche that everybody should look out for in the next 5 years?

If There is anything we have learned from the global pandemic, it is that people crave connection. Increasing attention is being paid to the way people live, interact, and socialise –creating the challenge of making densely populated areas more efficient and effective in providing residents with high quality living experiences.

Enter the metaverse, a digital environment where people can work, play, and socialise. Matterport is on a mission to digitise the built world, creating digital twins of physical spaces and making the digital environment a reality.To date we have brought more than 5 million spaces online. There is great potential in the Metaverse. We estimate there are over four billion buildings comprising 20 billion spaces in the built world, which is worth an estimated $230 trillion – more than three times the estimated value of all global equities combined. The built world is the largest asset class in the world, yet less than 1% of it is digitised, making it the largest undisrupted market and representing an enormous opportunity to generate tangible business results in the Metaverse.

The Metaverse is a new frontier that will open infinite opportunities for consumers and businesses alike, building a virtual digital twin of the worldone replica at a time. This is one reason why Matterport went live on the Nasdaq in July 2021. We hold the largest dataset of spaces in the world andwell on our way to unlocking the Metaverse.

The key trends that we will see thrive in the next five years are:

1. The rise of digital twins

In the Australian market, the Victorian government recently announced a revolutionary data platform that will build a digital model of Victoria – a $35.2m program that will drive the state’s planning and digital innovation capabilities. The project, named ‘Digital Twin Victoria’, will create a3D replica of Victoria that can be used to “turbocharge” delivery of major projects and help in city planning and urban development.

A digital twin is a photorealistic and dimensionally accurate digital replicas of physical spaces – whether it be a room, an entire building, or an outdoor space. Digital twins bring any space to life, offering capabilities such as interactive virtual walk-throughs and a more immersive and engaging experience that traditional 2D photos, floor plans and text simply cannot replicate.

Digital twins enable industries like real estate, hospitality, construction,and insurance to simplify how they work and connect with clients and vendors.These replicas also serve as living, breathing building models that can be leveraged across the property lifecycle and used for accurate planning,maintenance and remodeling, saving clients time and resources.

Digital twins are predicted by industry leading experts to bring major cost-savings for smart city urban planners. In fact, according to a recent report by ABI Research, digital twin technology is expected to achieve cost-savings of $280bn by 2030. Urban digital twins also offer improved sustainability and quality of life for densely populated areas.

In 2019, Gartner suggested 75% of organisations would implement digital twins within the next year, while in 2021, Accenture reported that 65% of executives expect their organisation’s investment in intelligent digital twins to increase over the next three years;various reports predict double-digit CAGR of the digital twin technology industry over the next 3-5 years.

2. Datafication of the built world

Data is today’s most valuable asset. With the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning technologies, there's a growing opportunity to unlock powerful spatial data-driven property insights and analytics. This increases the total addressable market for the digitisation and datafication of the builtworld to more than $1 trillion.

Big data technologies have become essential to the functioning of cities.Consequently, urban processes and practices are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism that is driving the development of smart cities.Huge amounts of data are generated, analysed, harnessed, and used to control,manage, and regulate urban life. And this trend is only going to continue.

3. The Tech 4.0 Revolution

The dramatic rise of smart technology has enabled digital twin technology to truly transform from just a digital copy of a building into a fully functional smart building. Today, data can be seamlessly pulled, integrated, analysed and synthesised into fact-based efficiency initiatives across an entire portfolio.  

By adopting a cloud-based platform with integrated technologies and partners rather than a standalone solution, digital twin technology becomes even more valuable and more multifaceted. This Strategy brings added benefits like how to virtually stage models, add IoT capabilities, carry out virtual snagging – and the list goes on. An open ecosystem for developers enables a new level of tailored customisation which is essential for the development of smart cities.

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How does your company innovate?

Matterport is a game-changer, connecting 3D technology and spatial data in an offering that fundamentally changes the way people live and experience the world. As a company, our main objective has always been to provide customers with the most innovative and groundbreaking technological solutions. Some of our key innovations and highlights include –

●     Breakthroughs In artificial intelligence and deep learning with our proprietary AI, Cortex. We continue to invest in Cortex, our industry-leading AI-powered image-processing engine, that consistently and accurately creates 3D digital twins at scale by handling complex tasks like 2D-to-3D reconstruction, advanced image processing, automatic color correction, object recognition, and room labelling. Matterport CortexAI is a robust deep learning neural network that creates the 3d Digital twins and automates what has traditionally been performed manually, significantly reducing delivery times.

●     We champion third-party integration such as API and SDK developer tools to enhance the experiences available with Matterport spaces and data. In 2020 we announced Matterport for Enterprise, an open, secure and scalable platform to drive interoperability among companies that design, build, operate, promote, insure and repair properties. Our Enterprise offerings include programs for partners and developers to integrate Matterport 3D models more efficiently into existing workflows, applications and systems. Our technology is also integrated to ensure it is mobile-friendly: today Matterport is available on iOS and Android, enabling anyone to create and share digital twins right from the phone in their pocket, or through a 360 camera.

Matterport’s innovation has paved a completely new path for customers to access, understand, and utilise the places in which we live, work, learn, and play.

Why is encouraging innovation, new ideas, and applying new technology important?

In the conditions of a dynamic business environment and ongoing pressures to survive in the market, innovation becomes the basic factor of the growth and development of a business. Encouraging innovation brings new solutions, new ideas, and new ways of doing business. The basic competitive advantage of today’s enterprises are reflected in its ability to innovate its own business.

With only 1% of the built world currently digitised, there is an opportunity for enterprises to apply new technologies to add – and derive value from – the largest asset class in the world - smart commercial, industrial,and residential properties. According to Savills World Research, today’s real estate asset class is worth an estimated $230 trillion while residential real estate alone is valued at $160 trillion.

The best way of meeting society’s growing demands is through technological advances. Innovations are no longer simply drawn from research and development, marketing and production teams, but also involve engagement of all functional areas within the business. As the old saying goes, “the more, the merrier”, and when it comes to evolving as a business through new ideas, this could not be more true.  

Learn more at matterport.com and browse a gallery of digital twins.

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