The economics of coworking are yet to be proven is an insightful article from the German online workspace magazine Deskmag.
The article is based on an interview with Richard Leyland, the founder and CEO of Worksnug. Leyland points out that coworking facility business models are still unproven. Key quote from the article:
“I’ve yet to see a highly profitable coworking space. It’s something at the moment that is conceptually nice, but whether it is financially viable is still to be proven,” Richard told Deskmag. His analysis was based on his observations and interactions with many space operators over the past year, rather than a statistical investigation.
The article goes on to describe 3 different business models Leyland has observed while working with coworking spaces.
Leyland raises an important issue. We often use the phrase "show me the money" in our trends work. By this we mean business and technology trends and shifts are much more likely to become widespread if they are supported by successful business models.
We agree that coworking facility business models are a work in progress and have posted on this topic in the past.
Our view is the coworking is in a business model experimentation phase, which is common in early stage industries. We believe it is likely that several viable business models will emerge from this phase, leading to the continued growth of coworking.
If we thought differently, we wouldn't be bothering with this project or blog:).
BTW, Worksnug is a really cool smartphone application targeted at mobile workers looking for workspaces. We'll do a full review in the near future.
Another BTW, we posted on Deskmag last week. We really like their coverage.
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