Communications of the ACM
The Rise of Co-Working
Credit: Blekinge Institute of Technology
For increasing numbers of people, co-working offers a welcome hybrid between working from the office and working from home. The concept of co-working means working alongside and collaborating with people in an office environment where each person is working on a different project. The idea first surfaced a few years back, but it reached an inflection-point about 18 months ago. The absolute numbers are still small — there are now around 760 office-based co-working facilities in America, up from 405 in 2010. Several factors are fueling their rise, including technologies such as cloud computing; more women and freelancers in the workforce; and economic pressure on firms' property costs.
Some co-working spaces are dedicated facilities, others are set up within business incubators or company offices. According to Loosecubes, 65% of the 2,800 workplaces available are inside small, private companies with desks to spare. Creative and media businesses with a culture of bringing lots of people together to work on specific projects are heavily represented among both users and space providers. New co-working chains are emerging, with names like The Hub and NextSpace. More established firms have also cottoned on to the trend, turning business centers into lounge-type environments for freelancers to work.
One strand of the co-working movement is the "jelly," an informal event, often held at specific times of the week, where people gather to work together. Co-working evangelists also emphasize the role of each facility's "host", a person who organizes social events for users, introduces people to each other and spots opportunities for collaboration. Still, there should be room for many different styles of co-working, particularly if it takes off among larger companies. Some big firms are trying to soup up innovation by getting people to co-work internally, by taking step such as removing personal desks and emphasizing collaborative working. There is also scope to turn empty retail space in the suburbs of big cities into large co-working facilities. Compared with city-center offices, these would take less time for people to commute to and cost less for firms to buy or rent space in. None of this, however, signals the immediate end of the conventional office.
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