I recently submitted a conference proposal on the subject of coworking.  The challenge is/was to explain coworking to an audience of corporate real estate, human resources, finance, and information technology professionals.

It's important to bridge this gap. To grow, coworking needs to cross the chasm between bleeding-edge/leading-edge early adopters and the mainstream audience.

What follows is an early draft of the of the first part of the proposal (the motivation for the project).

Coworking is the intentional banding together of independents, entrepreneurs, small teams, and other nomadic or untethered workers around a shared space that serves as work space, meeting space, office, and increasingly incubator for ideas and projects.  Coworking has grown rapidly over the last two years.  There are currently 70+ coworking spaces open world wide, and casual ad hoc work meetups called Jellies in 40+ cities world wide.

Coworking allows coworkers to connect with like-minded peers in order to create communities of their own choosing in which to work, and to do their work in spaces that are open and inherently collaborative.  Community and collaboration are strongly held values that characterize the members of the creative and technical professions that are increasingly important to value creation in businesses.

The motivation for our research was to explore and understand the reasons for the explosive growth of a fundamentally grass roots program, and to look for the points at which coworking will influence real estate, organizational design, and strategic planning today.

Modern coworking grew out of Open Source culture.  Like earlier successful Open Source initiatives, coworking appears to be a solution to a deep rooted need--a need that has been developing/incubating for years (support for a growing population of nomadic, untethered workers) catalyzed by technology (pervasive networking and wifi) and other environmental factors (price of gas, commute time). History has demonstrated that successful Open Source initiative take hold and grow rapidly, and have a transformative effect on business (see http://www.flossimpact.eu/ for the study on economic impact of Open Source Software in Europe).

Coworking and similar alternative workspace arrangements carry a similar potential to transform the "remote working" future of American business. This movement is currently driven by bleeding edge/leading-edge early adopters on the far side of the chasm. What they are doing, however, is demonstrating, clearly and concretely, that it is possible to create substantial business value outside of traditional office and organizational structures. In fact, they are demonstrating that the popular belief that the traditional office may actually inhibit the creation of value may be true.

Your thoughts?

- Todd Sundsted