There's a mini controversy going on around whether or not coworking needs a new name.
The recent Allwork article Why Coworking Needs a New Definition covers the new name side.
Key quote from Joyce Bromberg, chief strategy officer at Convene:
Everything that we know about landlords and how workplaces are designed, built, managed and staffed is being disrupted, necessitating a new name for what Bromberg predicts will become the way people work and how real estate will be consumed.
“Continuing to call it coworking is doing a disservice for what it has become.”
Liz Elam, long time coworking space owner and founder of GCUC, responded to this with her article Coworking Does Not Need a New Definition.
She stresses that the traditional principles, values and definition of coworking are still important and relevant and that a new name is not needed.
Allwork responded to Liz's article with Coworking Might Not Need a New Definition, but it Needs to Broaden the One it Has. It suggests the term "flexible workspace" might be the way to go. Key quote:
The industry has come a long way since it first took off in the early 2000s. As coworking spaces have evolved from open space to hybrid space, more people and organizations are increasingly using the term flexible workspace.
We agree that the term "coworking" is too limiting for what's going in the commercial office space industry. Firms like Industrious, WeWork, Serendipity Labs and many others no longer just provide workspaces where people work alone together.
They design and build out space to the specific needs of their enterprise clients. They provide ongoing facilities management, community features and a variety of other services, including IT and data on office usage patterns. They also build out and manage space that is completely occupied by the client's employees.
And very importantly, they provide more flexible lease terms than commercial real estate has traditionally provided.
Although these spaces are based on and share many attributes with coworking, they aren't coworking spaces. Instead, they're outsourced workspaces provided by an office services company.
This is part of a much broader trend - the servitization of products - that's impacting most industries. In the case of office space, this means a shift towards customized, turn-key, scalable, consumption-based commercial office space delivered as a service.
For this broader shift, we like the term "workspace-as-a-service". There are several reasons we like this name.
As-a-service is already a common way to describe the servitization of products. It also fits with what's going on in the commercial office space industry. And, of course, it's already being used by many in the industry - there's even a LinkedIn group with that name.
To us, coworking is a sub-sector of the workspace-as-a-service industry. It's the name for workspace-as-a-service spaces that embrace the principles of the coworking movement - community, openness, collaboration, accessibility and sustainability.
And BTW, coworking spaces that embrace these principles are not going away. Just the opposite, niche and community oriented coworking spaces are growing in number and thriving. We're forecasting this to continue.
Back in 2010 we said one of the most interesting things about the coworking industry was how rapidly it was expanding, evolving and mutating. It's still true today.
But we've also said we think the industry should begin to use a more reflective and descriptive term.
But from our point of view, it's not the coworking industry that needs a new name. It's the commercial office space industry.
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