The interesting compliment to this is the trend among large companies to reduce their real estate portfolio and allow their employees to workflex from anywhere they choose.  Accenture New York was about to lease an entire floor of New York real estate at New York prices and realized that their existing desks were occupied only 38% of the time.  They set up the cloud computing, BYOD (bring your own device), and performance/compensation systems required and then set their employees free.  They can work from the office (conventional real estate/fixed cost) or from home (no cost) or use their liquidspace budget (variable cost) to rent whatever kind of space they need to do the kind of work that they are engaged in that day.  AT&T is getting rid of their secondary city offices and just renting blocks of coworking space for their employees to use as needed.  Wells Fargo is now tying the compensation for senior managers to reduction of square footage per person in their non-branch offices.  Intel has moved 40% of its engineering staff to workflex positions in its Chandler Arizona office.

All of these large companies are kicking their employees out – for business strategy and financial reasons, but also because they know that innovation comes from diversifying what their employees are exposed to.   Innovation comes from having lots of people around.  Execution of those ideas requires focus and lack of interruption.  No one desk will provide both so those employees that are free to find the best place to do the work they need to do are more productive.  All of those workers need a place to land and are prime candidates for coworking spaces.

In a relatively short amount of time, the workspace landscape is going to change dramatically.  Work will happen where we choose.  Home is often too distracting and we want to go somewhere, so expect the coworking space trend to continue to boom.  The number of coworking spaces has doubled every year for the last few years.  Coworking spaces are smaller and more agile so they will pop up quickly in bedroom communities which will help people avoid a long commute.  They will begin to offer specialized services, daycare, or bike repair shops, or yoga to attract members that share those needs.  We will re-sort our work lives to find our preferred communities, because at its core, true coworking spaces are not about providing desks, they are about creating community.  For knowledge workers, this will be the new normal.  I am headed to the Austin Global Coworking Conference next week to see what this future looks like.