IFC will, no doubt be a major source of innovation in developing BIM as CAD develops to take the link between the design and the running as a smart building within a Smart City
These article on the left are some examples I have saved from the web relatiing to IFC
We should not forget the way BIM will play a part in the CAD process as we add more and more data to the CAD model, together with ways that the model itself can request data from out side sources to augmant this data rich model.