Besides the wonderful spirit and the incredible energy we experienced during these outstanding three days, one strong impression remains from all the discussions we had  : Coworking is becoming huge ! 

Coworking to shape the coming decade 

More than 220 people, originating from the five continents, gathered in Berlin.

If Europe was the most represented, an important North American delegation attended the event, alongside representatives from Asia, South America and the Middle East.

Coworking is not marginal anymore nor is it a western phenomenon. Coworking is a solution which naturally and independently arises in different locations of the world. It sounds like a common answer to emerging needs in the our fast changing economies and societies.

Accordingly, my conviction is that coworking is not only there to stay and grow. Coworking will be one of the most impactful trend that will shape the coming decade.

Similarities with the expansion of the internet

As a matter of facts, the short history of Coworking reminds us of some identical milestones of the early days of the internet.

Internet, just like Coworking, emerged out of a handful of isolated initiatives led by small groups of people motivated by different purposes. One day, those actions converged. The US Army was investigating the way to build a resilient communication and information infrastucture which wouldn’t be interrupted in the case of a damage in the physical network. Besides, universities had the need for a more convenient way to share knowledge and documents between academics. Many usages popped up with time. One day, Tim Berners Lee and other pioneers managed to connect everything. The internet, as we know it, was born.

The coworking movement surfaced, according to some consensus, simultaneously, in San Francisco and London. In 2005, developers in the Bay Area had a need for a new location to meet and get rid of the burden that was working out of a coffee shop. In London, the initiators of The  Hub  network, wanted to set up a platform and a community for social entrepreneurs. In the meantime, other players around the world had the idea to create – either as a side project, as a non for profit association or as a regular business – open platforms where nomad workers could drop in, either . One day, all these independent communities acknowledged they were part of a bigger one : coworking.

The common name and the values shared by the coworking promoters helped to build bridges between coworking spaces on the national and on the international level. In a way, the shared values of coworking (openness, collaboration, innovation, entrepreneurship, freedom, sustainability,…) are the TCP/IP and HTML of the coworking movement, the common understanding allowing the nodes to connect with one another.

a new way of working in the 21st century

Both, the internet and coworking, have grown thanks to the support of free, verry committed and value driven people.

Nevertheless, nowadays, as Alex Hillman puts it, coworking is not anymore in the hands, solely, of altruistic entrepreneurs or associations, although their role as pioneers is and will remain critical (just as the role of the “sharing driven” open source developers remain critical for the improvement and the strengthening  of the internet).

In the coming future, I expect Coworking to be more understood as a “new way of working”, a new way to set up inspirational working environment based on human factors, people openness and a collective will to achieve exciting things as well as to enjoy a meaningful professional life.

So, it’s likely that coworking will steadily spread out to new layers of the economical landscape, maybe under different shapes (“hybrid coworking“, or, as Sebastian Olma nicely writes :”something between between anti-corporate activism and Goldman Sachs investment banking” ?).

A matter of style and tastes

Alex Hillman compares the broadening scope of styles in coworking spaces with the variety we have in music. Individuals can enjoy jazz more than classical, listen to pop instead of esoteric… We all know these different styles belong to a bigger thing which is music.

I fully agree. I would add that tastes change.

I can, one day, be in a mood where I will be keen to listen to a rap. The day after, I could be looking for an opera soundtrack. Just as I will pick an Italian restaurant, one day, and go for a Japanese combo the day after…

Accordingly, the challenge of the multi-membership (individuals being members of a bunch of different coworking communities) could possibly arrive on the agenda of the coworking community, as well.

Coworking answering different challenges of our time – A list

So, why will coworking become a structuring trend of the coming decade  ?

According to me, due to the economical, cultural and societal shifts of the current time…  Here, is a list of reasons, I see,, partly inspired by the conference’s speaches :

The rise of the independent workforce

As the Emergent Research study showed during the Coworking Europe 2011 conference, the rise of the independent workforce is structural (at least, within the western world). Even more striking, the majority of the independent workers and entrepreneurs choose to become independent. They will need locations to meet, work and network.

New open innovation models

The technology is getting every day more complex. Innovation cycles shorten. Big companies are always more risk averse. Most of them can’t dance in a time of agility. Innovation is already coming from the outside, especially from startups and creative individuals. As the Otto Group company said, during the conference, coworking spaces can both play a role as trends watchers and serve as a bridge between innovators and big organisations.

The quest for a new corporate contract and for new corporate values

Not working “for” but working “with”. “Consider employees or freelances not as a ressrouce but as partners”, underlined Mutinerie. The economy is becoming more and more collaborative. So business organisations will (cfr Seats2meet presentation as well). Again, coworking sounds like the perfect platform/ecosystem to transform a human organisation into a more collaborative platform.

The integration of the GenY

The “twenty something” are turning their back to the traditional corporate model. They intend to be respected. They don’t tolerate to be yelled at by a boss just for the reason he or she is the boss… Nowadays, the perfect spot for them to work seems to be… a coworking space.

The emergence of a global “startupsphere”

We are at an age of rising micro-multinationals. What do you do, if you are a startup and need to expand abroad fast to breakeven, according to your business plan ? Ok, you can browse the web. But beyond that? What if you know no-one outside the walls of your city ? The coworking network is a community of communities where you will be able to get, at least, advices and connections, if not support. Nice to say, less obvious to achieve, however, warned us Liu Yan, from Shanghai (Xindanwei). Building a business, locally or internationally, is first a matter of trust building and, more and more, of sharing. Start with that. With respect to that, the coworking movement can help.

Need to bring the creative economy in cities and to interconnect local ecosystems

Coworking spaces create local ecosystems wich help to connect organically many players in a given town or city, much more efficiently than many other public intiatives with the same aim. The Berlin city, for instance, confirmed its interest regarding the impact coworking can have in the bridging of the local communities.

Jean-Yves Huwart

Coworking Europe 2011 conference initiator and co-organiser

Deskmag 2nd Global Coworking Survey

He is a specialist of creativity. According to him, Japanese companies have always been good to procuced very nice technological state of the art products. Nevertheless, they integrated too seldom the creativity, design and cultural inputs which give, today more than ever, the value to new items.

Toyota, once the champion of innovation in the world, is now facing a huge crisis due, for a part, for its inability to start from the customer’s taste and cultural sensitivity instead of giving the key of innovation mainly to engineers, who draw very efficient cars but too light in terms of emotional attraction.
Nowadays, however, Japanese cultural productions are becoming very popular all around Asia.

Will the economy of Japan rely more, soon, on cultural soft products than industrials outputs ?

Wait a minute… Do you mean no more euro, dollar or franc to exchange goods and services ? No more central banks ?

Such a statement, a few years ago, would have trigger a wave of smiles on the face of the business community. Today, however, Nick De Mey, young founder of the advising company Board of Innovation, could rather get some eyebrowns lifted. In those disruptive times, when even the highest monuments can collapse overnight, fresh ideas and proposition are most welcomed.

Right, reputation and attention have long be mentioned, already, in books and articles regarding emerging business models on the web (have a look at this piece written in 1997, 12 years ago). Though, tells Nick De Mey, attention and reputation won’t be currencies worth only in the web startups world.

The Brick & Mortar markets, manufacturing, should be prepared, soon, to use that kind of immaterials to trade with customers and suppliers. And monetize new activities

1. Left and right brain innovation

European policy makers have long seen innovation as a left brain thing: scientific, rational, processed, structured, top-down…
Europe has been pretty good in doing that. Many European companies are world leaders in a number of key sector, like aerospace, chemistry, automotive, etc.

But innovation is also a right brain stuff, based on creativity, imagination, entrepreneurship, emotional behaviour, human and social relationship, bottom-up… This part needs informality, serendipity, interactivity, unleashed thinking…
Those later aspects are as important to drive the innovation potential up. To let right brain innovation grow, we need to set up open and inspiring environments (physical or virtual), to ease and amplify human interactions, to free up radical imagination, etc.
On that field, though, Europe is lagging behind.
We use to say that succesful companies have managed to create a right balance between left and right brain. So can it be with economies.

2. Untapped bed of creativity and innovation within corporations

Huge innovation potentials sleep in employees head, untapped by their employers. Top-down, command management focuses on efficiency at the expense of creativity and side moves. Hereabove, “Job” told about management innovation. Perhaps is it the most difficult to achieve. However, there lies one of the biggest innovation tank we can dream of.
A.o., it can pave the way for more intrapreneurship, then more innovation.

3. The tight link between entrepreneurship, innovation and culture

Should it be within (intra) or outside an organisation, innovation comes with entrepreneurship. Foster people to speak up, believe in their skills and ideas, help them interact with the best experts to make the case for their project, will boost innovation.
A European economy with many startups, well connected, with access to bigger corporation’s open innovation processes, or just cluster of SME’s, could sparks.
For sure, that is a matter of culture. Europe should lead by as many examples as possible. We should also tell the story of a changing economical environment. Why are we heading toward a more innovative economy ? A.o., because knowledge, today, is almost everywhere. Globalisation has made the world economy so fluid that, soon, anyone can become a partner or a competitor. Change comes from the outside as well.