For several months we have been documenting the rapid evolution of distributed work, generally, and the take-off of coworking, specifically. At this year’s SXSW Interactive, the evidence of coworking’s coming of age was clear to see.
We have used various analogies and metaphors to try and make sense of the coworking impulse, but sometimes we perhaps complicate it. What we are witnessing, I am beginning to suspect, is something more elemental:
THE RE-DESIGN OF WORK ITSELF!
Basic assumptions about how and where work gets done are giving way (in some quarters) to a clearer focus on the ‘getting done’ more so than the how, where, or even who (see Outsourcing). That many people now work regularly in coffee shops, doing work for traditional employers, is commonly accepted be even the most stodgy, repressed corporate managers.
The coworking spaces that have come online in the past couple of years–Indy Hall, Citizen Space, Citizen Desk, Sandbox Suites, Office Nomads, Creative Space, Launchpad Cowrorking (soon)–represent more than just new places to work. They are part of the front edge of the redesign of work itself.
Just look at some of the spaces that BigCo are starting to build for their own offices. Intel’s new space looks like a half dozen or so large coffee shops spread out over several floors, with couches, lamps, and espresso bars here and there. The idea here was to bring Starbucks inside Intel to try and drive home the mixed community spaces that happen when people gather at coffee shops. This redesign was done after the company studied the use of cubicles and determined at any given time 60% of employees were NOT working in their cubicles.
Built-environment specialists such as WorkPlayce and MKThink have been building out creative work environments for many years, but it seems that the market (for space) is finally catching up with them.
The coworking spaces that we have visited in the past couple of months are all open spaces that invite collaboration and interaction. If this is where the corporate world is heading, then it seems that coworking is already there. What remains to be seen is if enough corporate decision makers get on board for there to be enough data to see what the long-term impact of consciously designed work spaces will be.
In light of the number of collaborative businesses that have recently been spawned in coworking spaces–Round3 Media, Conjunctured, CommandShift3, BIL–the data already seem convincing to me. But that’s just me-
Or, of course, you can just stay at The Cube Farm and not change a thing. If so, you’ll want to listen to this.
The Butcher
Study business without the crap. Version 0.00004.
2 Comments
A huge YES on the Redesign of Work. It’s knowledge workers 2.0.
Sometime in the mid-90s my parents visited me in Austin. I was still running Go Media at the time. My mother, in particular, was always somewhat baffled as to what I did for a living. So they spent a morning sitting on the couch in my office, observing. I had a design meeting, answered lots of email, brainstormed with a coworker, and installed some software. On the way to lunch, I asked my folks if they found that interesting. “Well,” said my mom, “I wanted to see you *work*…”
Now almost everything I do I can do from anywhere at any time. And even though I may do some of that work at home alone, more people than ever know what I’m up to because of Twitter and FriendFeed. I have the continuous partial attention of hundreds of coworkers.
We’re at the very beginning of the work redesign process - basically we’re creating use case scenarios now - experimenting with online and offline ways of getting our needs as knowledge workers met.
Cool stuff :)
My folks used to say the same things. What are you producing?
As if all the bankers and lawyers were producing anything other than dollars. It is particularly difficult in academics, where you work for months on an article for a journal, which only 7 people will read. It will get you tenure, but it won’t make you any extra money. I was always told: That’s a lot of work for something your not being paid extra to do!
My anthropological take on it is that most people are so framed within a very clearly (and often narrowly) defined Judeo-Xian world view that doing work that one actually loves is an alien thought. Life (and work), according to Genesis, is meant to be drudgery and misery, because we have fallen, are sinful, and deserve our misery.
Fuck that! Life’s awesome. Work is awesome. And miserable work is for people who just don’t get it-
Thanks Julie-
D
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