BusinessWeek reports today about the community-building and networking benefits of CoWorking, as a natural evolution of the coworking concepts of the pioneer of technologies for collaborative work and play Bernard DeKoven. (CoWorking Archives)
Over the past few years, co-working facilities–both grassroots, co-op-like versions and for-profit models–have started popping up across the country and the world, from Seattle to Copenhagen.
A co-working wiki hosts pages for dozens of other cities with co-working initiatives in progress. And while the concept of shared office space is nothing new to entrepreneurs, an increasing number of them are signing on and finding that the community-building and networking benefits outweigh even the virtues of a shared fax machine.
Working out of a Wi-Fi-enabled java joint in the Mission district was infinitely more pleasant and productive for him than flying solo in a home office at his Oakland apartment. And it provided the opportunity to meet other developers he might even be able to hire one day, as his Web-based car-sharing company, DartCar, grew.
In a recent report on the future of small business, the Silicon-Valley based Institute for the Future pegged co-working as a trend to watch over the next decade (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/31/07, “The Face of Entrepreneurship“). After co-working first took off with clusters of free-agent programmers and writers, its flexibility and low cost have also proven a good match for startups unwilling to sign a long-term lease. Because many of these facilities operate on a gym-membership model that doesn’t assign workers to specific desks, co-working is cheaper than most subleasing arrangements. And unlike traditional business incubators, co-working isn’t just for startups with high-growth potential.
The study’s lead author, Steve King, says the increasing popularity of co-working facilities reflects the rise of one-person “personal businesses” as well as a broader fluidity between virtual and real-world communities.
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Comments
@ 07:39
Small businesses and individual entrepreneurs have been sharing offices for decades, at least. Drawn together by the economic advantages of sharing secretarial services, printers, copiers, kitchens and conference rooms, they’ve funded a minor boom in office building construction. So what makes this CoWorking idea so new, so worthy of our collective contemplation? Wi-Fi? Sharing Internet connections?
I think it’s something else - something having to do with the informality, the ad-hocracy, the lack of walls, the lack of recognizable boundaries between people, the ready availability of conversation, the willingness to help each other, to advise each other, to pool expertise and experience.
It’s a physical manifestation of the nature of virtual community, and what we can in deed marvel at is not so much the creation of shared spaces, but the nurturing of openness, collaboration, informality, the evolution of new ways of working, new ways of understanding what it means to work, individually and collectively.
@ 02:14
Hi there; just wanted to correct something in the blog post. I created the coworking term about 2 years ago with a space in San Francisco; even though coworking-like spaces have existed for years, I was the first to kick off the coworking term and movement, which has now blossomed into grassroots coworking spaces around the world.
Best,
Brad Neuberg
bkn3@columbia.edu
http://codinginparadise.org
@ 07:39
Hi, Brad. Great to meet you. Ah, the Internet is a wonderful place, that it can bring us together like this so easily. The thing about “coworking” as a term, and movement-starting as an act is that there’s almost always someone else who used some similar term to mean some similar thing and started some similar movement before you. In the case of the term, it was me (though I’m sure I had my predecessors as well). And that was sometime in 2000 (probably before). And it was defined as “the art of online collaboration.” (see web archive)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.coworking.com
In fact, if you happen to go to http://www.coworking.com/ you’ll note that the term is still being used in that light, and, thanks to the work of Gerrit Visser, constantly being updated. Not to in any way deny your claim to fame or in any way to devalue the importance of your contribution to the coworking world, but rather to add a bit of perspective on the whole term-coining, movement-starting thing.
@ 11:20
Hi Brad, my congratulations for what you created with this successful model for sharing office spaces. When I heard a few months ago about http://groups.google.com/group/coworking I was not aware of the noise this new movement was creating. I am truly happy about what you have accomplished and to see how well your ideas are received. The shared office concept thrives on an interesting and timely trend. With great interest I will watch the further development. May I wish you all the best in your work as innovator
in the fields of collaboration and innovative web applications.
Gerrit