Start-Up Archives - Kristine Woolsey StudioKristine Woolsey Studio

Case Study: StormSource

Stormsource is a software company that is best known for Appointment-plus. In the last three years they have gone from 25 employees to 90 and their explosive growth continues. They were housed in 3 different suites of their original office building with spaces and functions cobbled together to fit the spaces they had. They were able to attract an investment group and are beginning to attract the attention of potential buyers and so decided it was time to create a space that was really theirs. They found a space in a building they liked and initially tried to work with […]

Case Study: PCA Skin

The PCA Skin sales are generated through outbound sales and inbound support calls, positions that are hard to attract, train, and retain qualified staff. We created a business/facilities strategy that generated measurable improvement.

Hierarchy of start ups, architects, and furniture

The conversation went something like this: me: We may need to fill in with some furniture from Ikea to hit the budget. Client: Ha! I am hoping to upgrade to Ikea! I laughed because sometimes, that is just so true! When you are in start up survival mode as a business, you are at the bottom levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. You can’t really afford to care about looks and if you hire an architect to help with your space, it is only because you have chosen a business or space where by law you have to have a permit. Your […]

And the Survey Says….

Research shows that people are better at conceptual thinking under high ceilings and better at decision making and execution under lower ceilings. Think furniture stores where you can imagine your entire house with new furniture under high ceilings and then are guided to a counter under dropped lights or lowered ceiling alcove to select the fabric for the sofa and sign the purchase agreement. What does that mean for office design? Different job descriptions? Different tasks? Different departments? Research shows that you are significantly more likely to launch a social relationship with a stranger each time that you run into […]

Darth Vader or Dragons? Leadership in the Networked Age

This diagram was drawn by Paul Baran and his team at the Rand Corporation in the mid 1960’s. It was used to illustrate the idea of a communications system that would survive in the case of damage from a nuclear war. This diagram and the resultant technology became the architecture of the internet as we know it today. There is more to the story of course but what fascinates me about this image is the number of times I have seen it in business books and articles recently. The diagram on the left is the old centralized business organization. […]

Juicy Conference on Coworking

I am just leaving Austin where I spent the last two days at GCUC the Global Coworking Unconference (pronounced “juicy”). The first day consisted of a series of panels populated by 45 people from all over the world with representation ranging from researcher to corporate leader to freelancer to real estate. The audience consisted of bearded hippies, suits and ties, tech geeks, real estate professionals, coworking space owners, with a huge range of ages 16 to 67, all gathered to discuss the coworking phenomenon, and it is a phenomenon! The first coworking space launched in San Francisco in 2005. It […]

Creating Community

A couple of years ago Regus began telling the story of how they had actually launched coworking through their worldwide proliferation of executive suite options. The coworking community rose up and loudly rejected this version of history. In the mainstream media this played out like a clash of younger and older generations but it runs deeper than that. Both Regus and coworking spaces rent desks by the day or month. Both can offer the same equipment, facilities, and amenities, but at its heart what great coworking spaces are actually selling is not the desk space, it is community. This might […]