Coworking Labs

Cubes and Crayons Franchising

Cubes and Crayons, one of our favorite coworking facilities because it includes day care, is licensing their concept.  Below is a recent comment from our post on Cubes & Crayons on Smallbizlabs.

"So, we recently launched our licensing program. Entrepreneurs can open their own Cubes&Crayons with the knowledge of our learning and the support of us behind their adventures. Lots of good candidates already, so start looking for Cubes&Crayons popping up in your neighborhood."

We are very excited by this news.  Combining coworking with day care is a great idea and look forward to seeing Cubes & Crayons sprouting up around the U.S.

The Growth of Mobile Small Businesses Driving Coworking

The Intuit Small Business blog (Intuit is an Emergent Research client) has a good case study on Bottle Docker, a company that makes beverage carriers for consumers.

The firm is almost completely distributed and mobile, relying on technology and the Internet for most business operations.  The focus of the case study is on mobile payments, but opens with a good description of a mobile business:

While the term mobile business is decades old, we’ve only more recently seen small businesses truly epitomize it. I’m talking about small businesses who have no “place of business” and rely completely on mobile technologies to perform every business function from email to customer management to sales.

We are seeing a growing number of virtual, mobile businesses.  With this trend comes the need for casual office space - and is another driver of the coworking trend. 

12 Million Home-Based Freelancers in the U.S.

The Economist has an article on the growing trend towards the use of online marketplaces like Elance and oDesk to connect companies with freelance workers. 

Not a lot of new ground is covered in the article.  But it does contain some interesting numbers from IDC.  The article reports that IDC says there are 12 million home-based freelancers and independent contractors in the U.S.  This number is expected to grow to 14 million by 2014.

Needless to say, this is a pretty good target market for coworking facilities.

Inc's Map of 20 Cool Incubators

Inc. Magazine has a great map highlighting 20 initiatives around the U.S. fostering innovation and creating new companies.  Inc. describes these as incubators, using a pretty broad definition of the term. 

In some cases they are traditional incubators, but in others they are funding mechanisms or VC related activities. 

The most interesting aspect is how widely dispersed the incubators are and what some of the activities are.  For example, I had no idea that Fargo, North Dakota is creating a biotech focused vaccine corrider. 

The Coworking Project

Coworking is a movement to create collaborative, community workspaces for independent, mobile and nomadic workers. 

Coworking facilities provide cafe-like office spaces and office equipment.  They also provide access to a network of independent and nomadic individuals and entrepreneurs. 

Despite the growth of the coworking movement, there has been little research on coworking facilities, their users, and their impact on work.  Emergent Research and the non-profit Society for New Communications Research are partnering on a project with the aim of better understanding the impact of coworking. 

We will use this blog to report on our research and post on coworking. Click here for an overview of the project.