Dr. Peter Linneman | Founding Chairman of Wharton’s Real Estate Department

10/07/19 • 0 min

Leading Voices in Real Estate

Dr. Linneman was an outsider economist who saw the obvious future in information, transparency, and capital flows.

Dr. Linneman was an outsider economist who saw the obvious future in information, transparency, and capital flows.

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Dr. Peter Linneman | Founding Chairman of Wharton’s Real Estate Department

The late 1980s saw massive changes in the real estate industry. The passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and then the S&L crisis that followed transitioned the industry into a modern, institutional business. During this time, Dr. Peter Linneman had just started reworking the real estate program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Dr. Linneman was an outsider economist who saw the obvious future in information, transparency, and capital flows. This week’s conversation dives into Dr. Linneman’s experience, from his perch at Wharton where he learned from and then counseled the then giants in the industry on this transformation as well as trained the future generation of leaders in the business.

Dr. Linneman’s story begins in Lima, OH, which at the time was a booming industrial city. He supported himself starting at a young age to attend private high school and went on to obtain his masters and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. During his studies, he was trained by prominent economists including Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, George Stigler, Ted Schultz and Jim Heckman. As an economist by trade, he started his career in general economics and industrial organization, which at the time was mostly manufacturing. Soon after, he pivoted to commercial real estate.

The Dean the University of Pennsylvania approached Dr. Linneman and asked him to evaluate the real estate curriculum in their business program. Following his research, he developed and designed Wharton’s renowned real estate program and subsequently served as the founding chairman of the department and the Director of Wharton’s Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center for 13 years. Quite literally, Dr. Linneman wrote the textbook for collegiate real estate programs.

Beyond his time in academia, Dr. Linneman has had a tenured career as a Founding Principal of Linneman Associates, a leading real estate advisory firm; CEO of American Land Fund; and CEO of KL Realty. He’s also advised leading corporations and served on over 20 public and private boards, including serving as Chairman of Rockefeller Center Properties, where he led the successful restructuring and sale of Rockefeller Center in the mid-1990s.

While Dr. Linneman is now retired from Wharton’s faculty, he and his wife Kathy support a program, Save A Mind, Give A Choice, which commits to educating young children of extreme poverty in rural Kenya. Dr. Linneman contributions to the academic study of the field has been instrumental in training the leaders of the real estate industry today and subsequent educational programs in real estate fields.

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Jamie Hodari | CEO and Co-Founder of Industrious

It’s no surprise that coworking spaces are shaking up the business world. Many companies are abandoning their traditional offices, selling assets like desks and rolling chairs, and downsizing square footage to move into modern outsourced workplaces, like Industrious and WeWork. With this growing trend, competition is increasing, though no two models are identical and profits can be hard to achieve. This week’s timely discussion with Jamie Hodari, CEO and Co-Founder of Industrious, touches on just that and drills into what sets a company like Industrious apart from others.

The three major takeaways from this conversation are just that:

In terms of user experience, coworking spaces are extremely differentiated.

Not all of these coworking businesses need to have a “unicorn model” that completely disrupts the office industry.

As reflected in most Leading Voices in Real Estate episodes: A great leader can elevate an entrepreneurial idea to a successful business.

Industrious is a company that follows this model to a T. The company is the largest premium flexible workspace provider in the U.S. with over 84 locations in more than 45 cities. Founded in 2013, Industrious has raised over $222 million and expects to be profitable in Q1 2020. They work in partnership with landlords, unlike the tenant of landlord models, and have secured over 20 landlord partners including Hines, EQ Office, Macerich, Jamestown LP, and most recently Equinox at Hudson Yards. Lastly, Jamie has guided the company to this growth through thoughtful decisions, by evaluating his competition, creating Industrious as a best-in-class coworking space, and partnering with established companies who are looking to revolutionize as well.

To some, Jamie has had an atypical journey to the CEO of an entrepreneurial business. He grew up in suburban Detroit, Michigan, next door to Justin Stewart, who’s remained a close friend and co-founding business partner of Industrious. He started his career as a journalist at the Times of India. He also previously ran the education non-profit Generation Rwanda, analyzed investments at the hedge fund Birch Run Capital, and was a project finance lawyer at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Prior to Industrious, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Kepler, a rapidly growing experimental university that Scientific American called a “daring global experiment” to bring “top-tier instruction to the neediest parts of the planet.” He’s an Ivy League triple threat, holding a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.P.P. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from Columbia University.