Angel: When I talked about scale in the context of coworking, I was referring to the industry – not individual coworking facilities. But I didn’t explain this well.
Several years ago we did a study on how small business owners define success. The quick summary of the results is most small business owners are not interested in growing or creating a big business. Most simply want their businesses to be large enough to support their lifestyle, fit with their values, meet their work/life balance goals, and/or let them pursue a passion. The blog post summarizing the research is at: http://genylabs.typepad.com/small_biz_labs/2008/08/how-many-types.html Our own firm, Emergent Research, is an example. We are a “lifestyle business” with no interest in growing beyond our current size. So we absolutely agree that small, no growth small businesses can be successful. Ours certainly is. What I was attempting to get across at the Coworking Unconference was the need for the industry to have business models that enable coworking to be sustained economically so it can grow to meet an increasing demand for a place where independent and distributed workers can thrive. We believe coworking will play an important economic role in the future. Shifts in the economy are leading to increasing numbers of contingent workers (freelancers, contractors, self-employed, etc.). Over the next decade that number is likely to approach half of the overall workforce. So far, many of these people are not faring well in the new economy. We think coworking and coworking facilities could greatly improve their work lives and their chances of earning a reasonable living. To do this, there needs to be thousands of coworking facilities in the US. This is much more likely to happen if there is a mix of sustainable business models supporting the movement. What is sustainable will vary by coworking space owner based on their individual goals and needs – and that’s fine. But given the high coworking facility churn rate (meaning closures) and lots of feedback from coworking owners who tell us they aren’t sure they are going to make it, we feel these models are yet to be fully defined. Steve On Mar 14, 9:47 pm, Angel Kwiatkowski <fccowork...@gmail.com> wrote: > When I disagreed with a statement that coworking spaces need to scale > and grow, it caused quite a stir at the Coworking Unconference. I've > been marinating on my decision to make that feeling public and I'm > real glad I put my feelings right out there. I found this blog post > that I wrote last August-only 5 months after Cohere > opened.http://coherecommunity.com/?p=1377"Business Growth: An > Argument." [I'm nothing if not extremely consistent!] :) > > Cohere got her legs under her at the 5 month mark and every person I > met out on the street wanted to know when I was going to expand or > open a second location. Check out the blog post and weigh in here or > in the comments on the blog with your opinion on whether or not (or > how) coworking spaces should expand/grow/replicate. > > Angel -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to coworking@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.
