A Deeper Look At Co-Working

Andy Budd is also a little hesitant too. He says that Clearleft (www.clearleft.com) in Brighton only shares his kitchen and a spare desk to friends. He said, “We don’t share our office with any other companies. However we do have a bit of an informal ‘open co-working’ policy of allowing friends and contacts to drop by our office and work when they are in town. So we often have people who don’t work for Clearleft sharing a desk free of charge for a day or two. We do this as a favor to our friends and because we enjoy the dynamic of having new people in the office. And they do occasionally feed ideas into our projects that we never would have thought about independently.”

Anne McClain at the Apartment (www.theapt.com) in New York is just beginning to explore the concept. They have decided that they wanted to have a more collaborative environment and have creatives to fill about 8 desks. “We are looking for designers and artists really in any field that have their own companies or things going on but that we could call upon from time to time to collaborate on our own projects,” Anne says. If she finds all eight, she will double the number of people in their company’s space.

British agency Creative Action (www.creativeaction.co.uk) purposely designed the studio office environment for creative collaboration. They share with about half their space with a mix of creatives, consultancies, IT companies and recruitment. “We always try and focus on creative collaborations,” founder Ian Silverstein says. “It works for us as we can share creative thinking and work with like minded people. This all adds to the mix and experience within our business.”

Finally, The Happy Corp in New York seems to be a little like refuge for professionals away from their home base. They lease space and rent desks to numerous other companies including Modern Sky – a Beijing based record label; Atelier Management – an LA based Photo Agency; and Arieff Communications – an SF based PR agency that specializes in fashion and green products and more

Matthew Spangler, Chef Strategy Officer at the Happy Corp (www.thehappycorp.com) says that although its nice to have other companies share some of the rent, their experience of co-working has helped them expand their offering. “We have found like minded companies that we collaborate with – often providing complimentary services in a close proximity that we can offer to our clients or provide as a value add to certain projects we take on,” Spangler says.

What may be surprising is the openness of these companies. There seems to be little worry about security or privacy issues and if there are, any risk seems to outweighed by the opportunities that creative collaboration offers.

If you share workspace, add to the discussion by leaving your experience in the comments section below – and do add your pics to This Aint No Disco too.