Are Coworking Spaces Here to Stay?

[This article was written by Brighton Youd.]

In 2005, coworking spaces first appeared on the business scene. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that the concept took off into the emerging business model it is today. As the information age transforms the global economy, project-based and freelance workers are continually looking for new ways to handle their workload. Coworking spaces now take up a major portion of office space in the United States, and that number is growing.

According to Emergent Research, there are currently 14,411 coworking spaces in the world today with the number of coworking members projected to rise to 3.8 million by 2020 and 5.1 million by 2022. As coworking spaces continue taking over the workplace, let’s look at the reasons why they’re here to stay.

What is Coworking?

Coworking spaces are shared workspaces used by a variety of professionals. These spaces are meant for independent workers to work side-by-side with professional peers. Unlike serviced offices, these spaces are the new and improved version that’s tailor-fit for the digital era.

Not only do coworking spaces give professionals a dedicated place to work but is a collaborative arena meant for the advancement of industry professionals across the board.

For example, Kiln, a dedicated coworking community located in Utah, inspires, connects, and accelerates growth. One of the users of Kiln, Kimmy Paluch, has found success with coworking spaces, praising, “We wanted a space where we could just hit the ground running. … We have already found immediate impact by interacting with other companies that are based here.”

It’s unique features like flexible monthly memberships with access to a dynamic office environment for individuals, teams, and companies that truly sets coworking spaces apart from its predecessor serviced offices.

Why Coworking Works?

Coworking, as well as other flexible workspaces, are known for offering environments that are conducive to innovation, collaboration, and productivity.

In 2016, Alessandro Gandini argued that little evidence supported that coworking actually works. Since then, coworking spaces have continually proved Gandini wrong. In Silvia Ivaldi’s thesis, “Understanding coworking: Between typology and contradiction,” she argues that coworking spaces provide a working environment for independent workers to develop social relations and eventually collaborate and create business opportunities.

New and Improved Workspaces

Coworking has quickly become the new normal. In fact, many knowledge professionals expect and prefer coworking environments to the traditional offices of yesterday. This means that a broad spectrum of businesses can enhance their attractiveness to new and current employees by adopting a coworking space.

Author Bio:

Brighton Youd (Community & Strategy @ Kiln)

Brighton has spent small stints of his young career in technology at Google, Qualtrics and Divvy. He is passionate about solving tough problems and is thrilled to be working with the Kiln team to build a premier coworking solution for the world’s brightest tech startups.