by Brianna Crandall — March 5, 2014—A recent national and global trend in office space called “coworking,” where freelancers and entrepreneurs share open, innovative workspaces but generally not the same boss, is described in a new report on workplace innovation from commercial real estate development trade group NAIOP. The versatile concept offers a membership-based workplace solution that provides independent workers with both a community and a place where they can focus on productivity.
Co-working centers bring together a diverse array of freelancers, entrepreneurs, programmers, app developers, startups, and anyone else who wants reliable Wi-Fi and a chance to socialize and exchange ideas with other professionals. The centers are typically found in areas with a high concentration of technology companies like Boston, San Francisco and Austin.
Like those who use them, the centers themselves are very different from a traditional office environment, featuring large, central open spaces filled with couches, coffee tables, and casual furniture, with private phone booths and a handful of doored offices around the perimeter, explains NAIOP. Revolutionizing the concept of workplace, the coworking center is defined by three elements: 1) multifunctional working/learning/social space; 2) a mixture of designated and undesignated seating; and 3) participation by membership.
NAIOP’s Workplace Innovation Today: The Coworking Center report offers these key facts about coworking:
- U.S. coworking centers have grown from just 1 in 2005 to 781 in 2013
- The United States leads the world in the number of coworking spaces
- New York has the most coworking spaces of all cities (73)
- Coworking membership increased 117 percent from 2012-2013
- Coworking spaces increased 83 percent from 2012-2013
- 79 percent of dedicated coworking facilities are individual, local operations
According to the report, a confluence of technological, demographic and cultural influences has fueled rapid transformation in the workplace. The Internet, social media and Wi-Fi have profoundly affected workplace communications as well as workplace flexibility. Reliance on this technology has produced a generation of young workers (the Millennials, also known as Generation Y and echo boomers) who expect continuous, personal access to information in real time rather than on a prescribed schedule, and insist on sharing information in an open-sourced, nonhierarchical way.
As a result, they expect a workplace with no doors or even walls, no set hours, and few professional boundaries, adds the report. While some corporations have viewed this as untenable, others have seen it as an opportunity to create more economical, collaborative and user-intensive workplaces. And freelancers and entrepreneurs who work outside of traditional companies have viewed it as an opportunity to create coworking centers—entirely new workplaces to serve this generation’s independent workers and small businesses.
According to the report, today’s innovative workplaces are born out of several generations of private and public sector-sponsored business stimulation efforts. Incubators began the trend, leading to the development of accelerators, innovation centers, and coworking centers. The most recent evolution, the coworking center has also become the largest innovation, with rapid growth and varied incarnations promising to make it the most influential as well.
NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, is a leading organization for developers, owners and related professionals in office, industrial, retail and mixed-use real estate. Comprising 15,000 members in North America, NAIOP advances responsible commercial real estate development and advocates for effective public policy.
