Over the past couple of days I’ve been writing about some of the financial-business constraints that coworking faces as it evolves. I’ve expressed a clear set of opionions on this, and have significantly raised the blood pressure in a few folks out there. As I see it, the process of devising a working coworking model that does not compromise the community spirit is something of a design challenge.
What Would Tim Brown Do?
When I confront a ‘wicked problem’- i.e. some problem that has incomplete, contradicitory and changing requirements- I often ask, What would IDEO do? Or, to put it more personally, what would Tim Brown (IDEO’s CEO) do?
Two specific Tim Brown pieces might help speak to the wicked problems that confront coworking communities in their efforts to open the doors and get going. First is Brown’s current Harvard Business Review article, simply called Design Thinking, which beautifully summarizes what ‘design thinking’ is. Secondly, an earlier piece in Fast Company, called Strategy by Design, relates design thinking to strategy formation and execution. Both worth checking out.
Many of you already act on the fundamental principles of design thinking, perhaps unconsciously.
1. What are the key user needs?
2. What are the primary constraints that define the problem?
3. What sorts of experiments can we run to start weeding out bad ideas?
4. What sorts of solutions have never, ever been tried but might actually work?
This last one is what Roger Martin refers to as abductive thinking, that is, a research-based consideration of what might be, what might happen next? Martin talks about this in his numerous articles on design and design thinking.
The point here is that perhaps we don’t know yet (this is in fact likely the case) what the most workable next-generation models for coworking will look like. With some creative partnering with people in real estate, finance etc., I’d like to think that some killer model is out there waiting to be designed.
On this, I would love to hear from anyone who has been wrestling with this wicked problem and has something to share with the community.
The Butcher
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