Coworking Labs

Coworking Facilities as Business Incubators/Accelerators

The trend towards the combination of business incubators/accelerators and coworking facilities is, well, accelerating. 

We posted earlier this week on business incubators and accelerators adding coworking.   Coworking facilities are also adding business incubation/acceleration programs. 

For example, Minneapolis coworking firm CoCo announced this week they are teaming up with the tech accelerator Project Skyway to open a new innovation center.

Project Skyway is a Y-Combinator type program that twice a year will provide 10 early-stage software companies with seed money, mentoring, training and networking.  It will be housed at the new facility. 

The business logic of combining coworking and business accelerators is powerful, and we expect to see more announcements like this.

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.