Lotus Living Kenya

The Global Real Estate industry is responsible for 40%-50% of energy consumption in most economies; innovative environmental development can make a major contribution to achieving emission reduction targets. (WBCSD, 2007)This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the subject of environment and development. My research here focuses on the transfer of technology, material and knowledge from more economically developed nations to the less economically developed ones. The fundamentals of my study are to assess the key components that affect environmentally friendly developments, both internal factors towards the manufacturing process and implementation of various technologies. Material and knowledge are dependent on each other to achieve the most competent product. The external factors affecting the development implementation process are primarily based on political, economic, social and technological change.Research methods consist of an extensive literature review on the global real estate development industry. Case study examples were used to demonstrate the impact of regulations on innovation, and semi structured interviews were used to confirm industry perspectives and give examples of innovation in the development process particularly in the less economically developed countries (LEDCs). The research concludes that there is opportunity within LEDCs especially towards innovative products throughout the sustainable construction value chain.The second part of this thesis focuses on the enterprise aspect of my research in part one. In this area, we begin by critically assessing the uniqueness of the concept at discussion, and finding out whether there is scope for implementing the contextual ideas in the physical world. After evaluating the practicality of the concept, we then visit the technical aspects of the idea - what the processes involved are and how the various technologies integrate together. We then shift our focus to the business idea and discuss the strategy and models that formulate the real estate development project. The managerial, financial and operational aspects of the enterprise follow, which provide a holistic view of the concept.