Rick Huijbregts

Rick Huijbregts is an instructor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and is the Principal at Oranje Consulting, a consulting practice focusing on digital disruption, business transformation, innovation, and agile strategies. With more than 18 years of experience in technology and real estate, Huijbregts focuses on the transformation of organizations in the public and private sector in today’s connected world.

Prior to starting his own consulting practice, Huijbregts was Vice President of Digital Transformation and Innovation at Cisco Canada. There, Huijbregts led business development and sales acceleration efforts for a multi‐billion‐dollar sales organization. Huijbregts and his team focused on the transformation of healthcare, financial services, energy, retail, manufacturing, and most prominently smart cities and the real estate sector. Huijbregts has been a leader of the Urban Innovation movement in Canada for the past 9 years, which earned him the exclusive Queen Elizabeth Royal Jubilee Award. At Cisco, Huijbregts’ responsibilities further included the Go‐to‐Market for the Internet of Things; defining and creating new and creative industry partnerships; country digitization; leadership of Cisco’s Toronto Innovation Centre; oversight of $20M commitment in research chairs and academic partnerships; and sponsorship of a $150M IoT ventures fund. Huijbregts started at Cisco in 2005 as a member of Cisco’s corporate real estate team, after which he served for three years in various business development roles focusing on the real estate sector in the United States, Canada, and Emerging Markets (Russia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America) regions.

Prior to joining Cisco, Huijbregts was executive director of the Center for Design Informatics at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and co‐founder and CEO at Edificium (an internet based construction collaboration platform). In these roles, Huijbregts has worked at the intersection innovation, technology, and real estate, supporting his passion to modernize and digitize the design, construction, and real estate industry. For numerous years, Huijbregts promoted and implemented business transformation initiatives with international organizations like IPMMC (Netherlands), AEW Capital (USA), McGraw‐Hill Construction (USA), Aukett Architects (UK), and Capital Planning Technologies (Canada).

Huijbregts holds a bachelor’s degree in construction management from Tilburg Polytechnic University (Netherlands), a master’s degree in real estate development and project management from Delft University (Netherlands), and a doctorate from Harvard University (USA) with a specialization in real estate technology and investment management. Huijbregts is currently an instructor at the Harvard University GSD Executive Education (USA) focusing on topics of Smart Cities and Smart Buildings; is Executive‐in‐Residence, member of the Innovation Advisory Board, and past‐Chair for the Building Automation Program Advisory Committee at George Brown College (Canada); and serves on the President’s Advisory Board for OCAD University (Canada). Huijbregts was named “Top 35 People to Watch” in the industry by Realcomm, and received a prestigious DigieAward from the real estate industry. Huijbregts lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.