Coworking Labs

Thoughts on the European Coworking Conference

We had a great time at the European Coworking Conference, which ended on saturday.  There is no way to cover all of the event in a single blog post, but below are some of the highlights from my perspective:

1.  Coworking is growing rapidly in Europe:  much like the U.S., coworking and the number of coworking facilities is growing quite rapidly.  There is a pretty interesting pattern to the growth - the farther south you go, the more facilities you find.

Spain and Italy have a lot of coworking facilities.  The nordic countries have few.  The countries in the middle - Germany, France, UK, etc - have strong coworking movements but not as strong as Spain and Italy.

I'm not sure what, if any, conclusions you can draw from this.  But it is interesting.    

2.  European Coworking is Very Similar to U.S. Coworking :  The topics, issues and discussions were very similar to what is covered at a U.S. coworking event.  Even the look and feel of the event and type of people attending were similar.  This is not at all surprising in today's globalized world, but still interesting.

3.  Business Models are a Key Challenge:  Just as in the U.S., coworking business models are a key challenge.  The European facilities are experimenting with a lot of alternatives.  Deskmag has a good article on some alternatives suggested by Mattia Sullini from Italy. 

The bottom line is the bottom line for coworking in Europe is yet to be fully figured out.

I'll have more the on the conference after Thanksgiving.

 

Coworking Europe 2010

We're attending Coworking Europe 2010 this week in Brussels.  Friday'sagenda looks quite interesting and I'm looking forward to diving deeper and spending more time meeting people at the "unconference" on Saturday.

I'm also excited to meet attendees I've interacted with online and on the phone, but haven't met face to face.  Jacob Sayles from Office Nomads, Anna Thomas from Loose Cubes and Richard Leyland of WorkSnug all fit this description. 

We will post on the conference in the coming weeks.

The Real Magic Comes From Being in the Same Place

The New York Times article Start-Ups Follow Twitter, and Become Neighbors covers a group of companies that have purposely rented space in Twitter's building.

The key quote from the article is:

“Even though it’s all about tech and the Internet, the real magic of Silicon Valley comes from people being in the same space,” said Burt Herman, co-founder of Storify.

If you read the article, you will see that the reasons these firms are interested in co-locating with Twitter mostly fall under the category of "accelerated serendipity."

The implications for coworking are pretty obvious. 

We cover this and the broader new localism trend in more detail over at Smallbizlabs. 

The Growth of Incubators

A recent research paper from Syracuse University - Boon or Boondoggle? Business Incubation as Enterpreneurship Policy - has a lot of interesting data on incubators mixed in with the usual academic jargon.

The chart below is from a presentation given by the study author.  It shows the growth pattern of incubators over the last couple of decades.  There are more than 1400 incubators today, up from just 12 in 1980.  As a recent Business Week article points out, this growth is expected to continue.

  

The paper and presentation has some really interesting data on the ownership of incubated firms:

• minority owned firms only comprise .5% of incubated firms. 
• women owned firms only comprise 6.1% of incubated firms

These numbers are quite surprising since most incubators are non-profit and at least in part government funded.

Other interesting data includes:

• The Economic Development Agency has given out 30 incubator construction grants in 2010
• The average grant size is $1.5 million
•  The expected operating budget for each of the funded incubators is $500k per year.

Space12 - A Community Coworking Center

The Spinuzzi blog has a good article describing Space12 in Austin, Texas.   Space12 is a non-profit community space that serves the needs of their broader neighborhood. 

In addition to coworking space, Space12 is an art gallery and music venue.  They also provide short term space rentals and provide space to non-profit groups. 

Space12 is another example of the wide variety of coworking spaces. 

Economic Development and Coworking

We think there is a natural fit between coworking and local economic development.  A growing number of local government groups are agreeing and starting to explore the use of coworking to promote jobs and economic growth.

Several towns in Iowa are looking at adding coworking for economic development reasons.  Another example is Hillborough County, Florida.  They have added coworking to their strategic plan for economic growth.

Their plan calls for considering coworking facilities to help drive entrepreneurship and growth in a few, key industry clusters.  These include health records, business analytics, medical devices and IT.