3 Proptech Lessons from the 2000-Year Evolution of the Elevator
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Yes. Two Millennia.
I used to ridicule real estate’s incredibly slow proptech adoption cycle by citing its three innovations in the last century: The Cinder Block, Air Conditioning, and Elevators. And then I realized I should actually be bashing it for only adopting two innovations. Turned out the evolution of the elevator has taken over TWO THOUSAND YEARS.
I frequently reference Clayton M. Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, because its classification of sustaining innovations vs disruptive innovations is so timeless. Most innovations in real estate are of the sustaining variety. They make nominal improvements to an existing product line over the life cycle of the product. Elevators have been mostly in the sustaining innovation category ever since Archimedes supposedly built one in 235 BC using a system of pulleys and a platform.
For the better part of the next two thousand years, elevators were powered by humans or animals pulling a rope, and were used to carry all sorts of things- gladiators and lions in the Roman Colosseum, ore in mine shafts, battering rams in sieges, and food in dumb waiters. But we may finally be on the verge of a disruptive innovation.
Lesson 1. Deadly Products Evolve Slowly
London, 1823. Just shy of two millennia after the first elevator, two architects introduced a steam-powered elevator, capable of lifting up to 12 passengers to 120 feet. It was a technological marvel, allowing tourists to see the city scape from the top of the building.
Except nobody wanted to ride elevators because they thought they’d die in them. Steam engines were prone to explosions and elevators could fall.
Products that can kill customers tend to have a slow adoption cycle because staying alive usually takes priority over convenience. Buildings inherently has to have a lot of life safety measures built in, so a lot of proptech hardware has to design for these conditions.
So it took a full 32 years and a savvy businessman for people to take elevators more seriously. New York, 1854. Elisha Otis (yes, that Otis) gave a demonstration in which he stood on an elevator platform and cut the rope, only for the elevator to stop immediately. He had introduced an emergency braking system. It was received with much fanfare, and elevators literally and figuratively began to gain some traction.
And another 13 years later, hydraulic elevators emerged to provide an alternative to steam engines. And 13 years after that in 1880 Werner von Siemens (yes, that Siemens), introduced the electric elevator. He was immediately outdone by Frank Sprague, who developed an electric elevator that could lift heavier loads and reach a mind boggling 7 miles per hour.
With buildings getting increasingly taller and two of the most common causes of elevator deaths solved, the subsequent proliferation of elevators led to a brand new profession.
Lesson 2. New Technology Creates AND Kills Jobs
Whenever new technology automates human labor, a debate rages on about whether jobs will be destroyed. The counter argument is that new technology creates jobs that we never would have thought of. Elevators actually did both.
“Elevator operator” emerged as a legitimate profession, requiring all sorts of safety training and certification. It was a lot like a train conductor, but oriented for vertical transport. With elevators facilitating the design of taller buildings, they became increasingly common in cities.
And elevator operators were common during business hours- they controlled the speed, timed the stop, and operated the doors. They helped alleviate fears of dying in an elevator.
Although that didn’t stop people from dying. Automatic doors were introduced to remove the human error of opening the doors at the wrong time. Gearless traction was introduced in 1913 as an added safety measure. And elevator music made its debut in 1928, again, to calm people’s fears. And safety bumpers were introduced in 1945 so that the automatic doors wouldn’t shut on people.
Funnily enough, elevator operators became so commonplace that people felt less safe without them despite the introduction of safety technologies to remove human error. Unions formed, and several debilitating strikes took place throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The strikes, ironically, are what drove the adoption of safety technologies that ended up killing the unions, and ultimately, the profession.
Lesson 3. Proptech Innovation Happens at the Speed of the Slowest Technology Involved
For the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, elevator technology was arguably the largest factor in limiting the max height of buildings. Concrete was probably a close second, but in 1967, reinforced concrete and sustaining innovations in elevators ushered in a new era of skyscrapers.
This also gave ‘rise’ to an engineering discipline called Elevatoring– the study of how many elevators are needed and at what speed. Because achieving faster top speeds gets exponentially more difficult in larger and taller buildings.
The Elevator Speed Race
As skyscrapers fought to claim the title of tallest building in the world, an elevator speed race commenced:
- 1978 Tokyo’s Sunshine 60 building, 786 ft, 22 mph
- 1993 Yokohama Landmark Tower, 972 ft, 28 mph
- 2004 Taipei 101, 1667 ft, 38 mph
- 2015 Shanghai tower, 2,073 ft, 46 miles per hour
- 2017 Guangzhou CTF Finance Center, 1,739 ft, 47 mph
Each successive gain is smaller as it solves increasingly obscure engineering problems. The weight of the cables holding the elevator become a huge factor after a certain height, so the materials used in cables evolved from hemp to metal wire to steel and resin, and soon carbon nanotubes.
Building sway and climate differences at higher altitudes also have to be accounted for in supertall buildings so elevator passengers don’t get sick.
And over certain speeds, elevator cabs howl as they push air out of the way, requiring a conical shell to become more aerodynamic. And air pressure changes too fast, so the cab pressure has to be regulated.
Evolving the Elevator Past Speed Limits
Today remote monitoring, big data, and predictive analytics are driving micro-improvements in performance to optimize elevator usage.
But once again, human safety seems to have placed the largest limit on elevator speeds: 54 mph. That is the speed at which people cannot adjust to the pace of the air pressure change. And on the way down, 22mph is when people start to feel like they’re falling.
Currently, the biggest thing holding back the construction of buildings over a mile high is the limits of elevators.
Which means a disruptive innovation has to happen in order to unlock the next wave of super tall buildings. The holy grail is the sideways elevator- an elevator which can go in any direction. Thyssenkrupp has created a prototype that can go in multiple directions without cables and driven by magnets.
The technology is there, but the reason why it’s not happening any time soon is that local municipalities can’t figure out whether it should adhere to elevator code or train code. Which goes back to lesson one. Deadly products evolve slowly. Ropeless high speed elevators create new ways for people to die, so there has to be appropriate governance to maximize safety before adoption can proceed.
Lessons for the Proptech Adoption Cycle
The evolution of the elevator is a fantastic case study in why proptech adoption cycles are so long. I made an analogy to the pitch drop experiment in this article, explaining that real estate flows like asphalt. There are so many stakeholders that it takes years for processes to change. But that’s just the nature of the business. If you’re a proptech founder, read more of my founder’s guides to understand the real estate industry better, or connect with me on LinkedIn and let’s chat!
Note: Most of the historical research in this article is drawn from Super Tall, by Stefan Al.
Derek is the founder of The Proptech Scout, as well as an NYC landlord and real estate developer. In a former career, he bootstrapped and exited an e-commerce business while side hustling as a strategy consultant.