Coworking as a New Innovation Scenario from the Perspective of Mature Organisations

This article discusses the relatively young phenomenon of coworking and its value propositions from a company’s perspective. It aims at giving an overview of the current research on coworking with a special focus on coworking as “third places” for mature organisations. In contrast to startups, freelancers and micro businesses, which use coworking spaces as their primary work location, traditional organisations dispose of a corporate office and use coworking only as an alternative work scenario for a variety of purposes. Based on a cross-disciplinary literature review, an evaluation of the current state of research on coworking from a company’s perspective is given. Due to the absence of extensive research on companies as beneficiaries of coworking spaces, no existing classification or analyses of value propositions could be identified. However, the authors propose a research landscape of coworking from a company’s perspective with a focus on the question, of how coworking correlates with drivers of an innovation culture. The article concludes with looking at current developments, both in the coworking offering as well as the demand side.