Dogs Allowed
Various workspaces Free meeting rooms
Alloy All members19 No Yes Assigned desks and couch only
One meeting room
Cosite Full members No No Tables, desks, standing- height desks, couch and
chairs
Initially, no separate rooms; later, meeting rooms and a
classroom20 ProShare Office tenants
or those with designated
desks in cubicles, but not
for drop-in coworking
Yes Yes Private offices or suites for tenants. For coworking members, one
large table primarily, some chairs and tables in
lounge areas scattered throughout the building, outdoor seating, kitchen
area seating21
Several
Workmine
Operating hours only at first,
then began offering 24-hour
access to full members
No Yes One large table, desks, standing-height desks, couches, outdoor seating,
coffee shop22/kitchen area seating
Several
19 There was only one type of membership available at Alloy, which included a reserved desk and 24-hour access to the space.
20 Cosite has since grown to offer access to separate meeting rooms like the other three spaces, and the area around Cosite has continued to develop, but at the time of my interviews, it did not offer separate meeting space, nor many nearby places to grab coffee or lunch. They did offer free coffee in the space, though.
21 ProShare later extended their coworking options to include
22 When I first started working at Workmine, a pop-up coffee shop operated out of the large kitchen area during limited hours of the day. The coffee shop later moved to their own space nearby.
95 THE PEOPLE AND THE “VIBE”
Many independent workers and entrepreneurs take a strong interest in networking. Meeting new people can expose them to new business opportunities by connecting them with potential clients,
collaborators, and contacts. For this reason, the existing members of a coworking space or businesses nearby can present a strong draw for potential members. Dana, for instance, chose Alloy over CO2 and other options, because of the presence of Ilk magazine in the same space and the businesses in the same complex of buildings in Steelworks Mill. She commented:
Really just the relationship, just the idea of being able to nurture the relationship with [Ilk], I had, kind of like, a point person at each company for, you know, like I was in touch with [the operations manager at the magazine] and then I was in touch with [someone] from [the radio station in the building] and then in touch with some folks from [another] office, and since then it’s like nine of us people and now like I’m having daily conversations or grabbing a weekly coffee and we’re doing more and more things together and it’s just I’ve seen growth and, you know, opportunity for our artists because of where we’re at. Which is why I decided…two reasons for picking [Alloy] were because I thought that opportunity would pan out and because of price.
Although Dana liked the space and meeting rooms available at CO2, she prioritized the potential for making connections with the people at Alloy and in Steelworks Mill. Similarly, Izzy looked at several coworking spaces and business centers before choosing ProShare. Several factors went into her decision – for example, she “didn’t like the parking situation” at IndySpire, located in downtown Riverport – but one of the reasons she ultimately settled on ProShare was because she liked “the vibe” of the space.
HO W ME M B E R S’ IN T E N T I O N A L I T Y VA R I E S
The four coworking spaces where I conducted field work – Alloy, Cosite, ProShare, and Workmine – differed in terms of member intentionality in several ways. As explained above, the three most common reasons members cited for choosing to start coworking were, in order: productivity and/or professionalism, sociability, and separation between work and home. Variety in workspaces also featured
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in one members’ rationale at each of the four spaces. The table below summarizes the variation in members’ intentionality across the four coworking spaces (Table 2.2). Variety is not included, as it did not vary across spaces.
TABLE 2.2: MEMBERS’INTENTIONALITY ACROSS COWORKING SPACES
Coworking Space Members’ Intentionality
Alloy High Productivity, High Separation, Medium Sociability Cosite High Productivity, Low Separation, Low Sociability ProShare High Productivity, Low Separation, Medium Sociability
Workmine Medium Productivity, Low Separation, Medium Sociability
Cosite members were the most likely to name productivity or professionalism as a reason for coworking, the reason provided by a majority of the members I interviewed. Alloy had the greatest number of members (5) who sought a coworking space because they wanted separation between work and home, while Workmine had two, and the other spaces had only one member each. Cosite had the lowest proportion of members who joined for sociability, while ProShare and Workmine had the highest proportion of the four spaces. Chapter 6 examines the consequences of this variation for the quality and strength of coworking communities.
97 CO N C L U S I O N
This chapter outlined the socioeconomic context of the rise of independent labor, as well as the challenges independent and remote workers face. Risk and challenges concerning work effort visibility feature prominently in the work environments and employment relations these workers experience.
Remote workers use a variety of technology-mediated communication strategies to increase their work effort visibility and improve communication with off-site bosses and coworkers. For some, perhaps especially women, remote work presents opportunities, in that reduced visibility with management can equate to a reduction in side projects or “busy work.” Coworking may also represent a valuable source of social support and means for independent workers to collectivize risk.
The discussion above also presented four key reasons why workers join coworking spaces: (1) to increase productivity and promote professional development, (2) to combat loneliness and isolation, (3) to reinforce the boundary between work and home, and (4) to pursue a different way of working,
characterized by variety and flexibility. For some members, major life events precipitated their turn to coworking. Izzy experienced a major health crisis that prompted her to reevaluate her priorities. She wanted to work less and have more time for other things. ProShare allowed her the social interaction she craved and provided amenities like a gym where she could work out during the day. Teresa also made a major life change after her father became seriously ill, since “whenever big things happen, you start to think, is this really the life I want?” She quit her job in another city and moved to Riverport, where she started freelancing. Kyle also decided to make the leap from working for a firm to working on his own.
Membership at Cosite and Workmine facilitated that transition, as it helped him find clients.
Members also varied in the reasons they reported for selecting one coworking space over another.
Price led among the factors members considered, while location and proximity to members’ homes also
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featured prominently. Characteristics of the space’s layout and design, such open-plan layouts and light, airy spaces, appealed to many members. Some even mentioned art work and seating as reasons they preferred a particular coworking space. For members who planned to meet clients in their coworking space, the “coolness” of the space, as well as the building and neighborhood where it is located, also influenced their decisions. Finally, amenities and access to the space also impacted members’ choices, with 24-hour access and a variety of workspaces the most influential.
Members’ intentionality has implications for the quality and strength of coworking communities, as we will see in Chapter 6. To the degree that a coworking community precedes the coworking space, members’ intentionality can also influence founders’ intentionality. Although members’ and founders’
reasons for coworking differ, as will be discussed in the next chapter, the problem of loneliness and isolation is one shared by members and founders alike. Having previously worked or currently working as independent or remote workers, founders tend to arrive at coworking already empathetic to the needs of these workers. Still, coworking yields unexpected benefits and insights for founders, as well. The next chapter examines founders’ reasons for opening a coworking space and the visions they have for what they hope to create in those spaces.
99 RE F E R E N C E S
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28–31.
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Hacker, Jacob S. 2006. The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Whyte, William H., Jr. [1956] 2002. The Organization Man. Foreword by Joseph Nocera. Philadelphia:
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102 CHAPTER 3
FOUNDERS’ INTENTIONALITY: RATIONALES FOR STARTING A COWORKING SPACE
IN T R O D U C T I O N
Building on the previous chapter’s discussion of members’ intentionality, this chapter examines the intentionality of coworking space founders and owners: why they choose to open a coworking space and their visions for what they want to create. Like regular members, coworking space founders and owners include entrepreneurs, freelancers, and independent workers who are able to work remotely. They do not, however, tend to comprise full-time employees of a small business, unlike some members who work in coworking spaces because their boss chose to. As entrepreneurs, freelancers, and independent workers, they experience many of the same challenges faced by their members. For many, it is these very challenges that compel them to open a coworking space, often after connecting with others in the same situation, as discussed further below. Others saw changes in the market that made opening a coworking space seem like a prudent business decision or even a potential driver of regional economic development.
The discussion in the section below focuses on the various reasons founders and owners cite for creating their coworking spaces. Most of the remainder of the chapter examines differences between founders in terms of the reasons and values that arise in discussions of why founders or prospective founders wanted to open a coworking space, the business of starting and maintaining a coworking space, and the culture of coworking spaces. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the nature of coworking communities and an assessment of the impact of founders’ intentionality. The data for this chapter derive
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from interviews with fourteen coworking space founders and owners – ten from the Global Coworking Unconference Conference (GCUC) and one each from my four remaining research sites; interviews with five staff members – one from GCUC, one from Cosite, two from ProShare, and one from Workmine23; observations from fieldwork at GCUC and four coworking spaces; and surveys of my interviewees and GCUC attendees.
WH Y D O P E O P L E C R E A T E C O W O R K I N G S P A C E S?
NEWCOMERS VERSUS ORIGINALS: DIFFERENT VALUES AND REASONS FOR OPENING A SPACE
For some, coworking offers primarily a profitable way to fill commercial real estate space in the changing market. For others, like Frederick, coworking represents more than mere business strategy, but a conscious effort to create value for coworking members by developing a flourishing coworking
community that encourages serendipitous encounters between members, or what Ronald van den Hoff calls “unexpected, relevant experiences” (van den Hoff 2014: 194). Some GCUC conference attendees noticed that newer and prospective coworking space owners tended to have different reasons for opening coworking spaces than many of the originals – the founders of the earliest coworking spaces – had mentioned. While the originals shared desires for community, the newcomers often had more business- oriented aims for their spaces. The questions that came from new and prospective owners at the conference often centered on how to make coworking profitable. Some originals I spoke with at GCUC voiced concerns that as coworking grows and becomes more institutionalized, more and more people
23 At Alloy, the smallest of the four coworking spaces where I conducted fieldwork, Ben performed both the role of founder and community manager.
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become interested in opening spaces, but many of these newer and prospective space owners do not operate under the core values of coworking: accessibility, collaboration, community, openness, and sustainability.
Part of the conflict arises from different understandings of the core values, as they are deliberately vague to allow diverse interpretations and expressions of them. As Sean put it, “the great thing about the core values is that they are open to interpretation; the problem with the core values is that they are open to interpretation” (Sean, interview). Yet, as the proportion of prospective owners in attendance at GCUC grows, so does the fear among originals that many of the new guard do not know the core values at all.
Many originals expressed that, whatever diverse interpretations there may be, the values set coworking apart from a pure service model of office space rental.
Entrepreneurial-Oriented versus Community-Oriented
A divide seems to have emerged between the more community-oriented originals and the more entrepreneurial-oriented newcomers. This split becomes particularly visible in discussions about growth.
While a concern for both originals and newcomers, session leaders at GCUC – who were most often established space owners – tended to talk about space growth in terms of community growth and growing in a way that preserves the nature of the community. For instance, Lori felt that there was a push to get more members faster and to grow the space bigger faster; she argued for the value in slowing things down, as building a strong community takes time.
In contrast, questions from GCUC audience members, which contained many new and
prospective owners, centered on square footage, that is, how to decide when expansion of the space was economically sustainable or how to decide how big a space to open in the first place. This differs significantly from what originals focus on. In fact, when speaking to me about the core values of
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coworking, Sean stated, “one of our constraints is never focus on square footage. When we are making a decision, and square footage even comes into the conversation, that’s a clue that we’re about to go down the wrong road.” He discussed the decision to grow and how this has become a recurring theme at the conference in the past few years:
Every time we’ve grown it’s the same thing. We don’t grow because we have to grow. We grow because the community is growing. Together we discuss the pros and the cons of getting bigger. There’s going to be more overage. Is that what we want? There’s more risk. Is that what we want?
Growing for the sake of growing is a big theme at the conference and has been for the last couple of years.
If you think you need to make your coworking spaces bigger in order to be more profitable, I think you’ve got your head screwed on wrong. If you can’t look at what you have and see more ways for it to be more valuable, I can’t imagine that bigger is actually going to be better. It will probably be worse. One of our party lines is, bigger isn’t better, better is better.
Certainly, economic sustainability necessarily concerns all space owners. Space owners must decide how much to charge for membership and if and how much to charge for other services to create a coworking space that generates enough income to sustain itself. However, established founders’
discussions of economics most often reference sustainability and value for the community members rather than pure profitability, and are often couched in terms of a commitment to members or the desire to create lasting change through the community. For instance, Harrison highlighted the sense of responsibility founders feel to the people that invest their time and effort into creating the space:
Building a space that isn’t profitable and won’t stay open, you’re asking people to give a lot of their energy and a lot of themselves. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they all will work but to essentially invite and ask people to engage with something that you have no idea, I had no idea how to make Hub work when I started. I think you get the picture. You’ve got to have a model that could emerge that could support it.
Otherwise, I’ve seen so many times really good people put energy into things, and everybody only has a limited amount of energy.
Although most space founders must navigate a steep learning curve, especially during the early days of coworking when there were fewer examples of successful spaces, as Harrison explained, a commitment to the community often fuels their drive to figure out quickly how to create and sustain a thriving coworking space. Building relationships is integral to that process.