Värde, effektivitet och strategi - Hur kan en digital tvilling bidra till fastighetsföretagande?

Sammanfattning: Words such as digitalization and PropTech are appearing in research and impacting organizations within the real estate industry and though out society. The real estate sector is known to be slow on investing and implementing technology. The Swedish real estate company Akademiska Hus AB that owns and operates, mainly campus related facilities, have started a project on creating digital twins of parts of the portfolio. In a society where companies are moving towards working with real estate as value drivers in organizations, technology has become an interesting angle on the subject. The aim of the master thesis is to gain insight on how digital twins can be used as a tool to improve strategic and internal processes of real estate companies in commercial real estate. It also explores how traditional business models in the real estate sector could be impacted by digital twins. The thesis is a qualitative case study on Akademiska Hus ABs platform for digital twins. 14 interviews, internal documentation, presentations, and the company’s website were used as data sources. The study was conducted during spring 2022. Business Model Canvas by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) is used to present the result of the case study. The study finds that digital twins can be an influential tool in strategic real estate management. As for business models, the technology is likely to result in significant changes in the business models for real estate companies as well as new value propositions for customer segments such as companies, students, and employees of the university. The thesis mainly applies to organizations that use real estate as an office and/or university campus. Even though it is not possible to measure value at this stage of the project, a digital twin could be an enabler in the real estate business and its digitalization journey if the full potential of the technology is unlocked. The thesis approaches business models in the real estate sector which tend to be traditional. The most extensive research and use cases on digital twins are in the manufacturing industry. Hence the case study on real estate digital twins, business model innovation and value creation enable further research opportunities in the field of PropTech, digital twins and business models. It also provides relevant insights for real estate companies, their customers, mainly but not exclusively related to university campuses.