Co-working Spaces, Collaborative Practices and Entrepreneurship

Collaborative work practices are being transformed through the growth of co-working in urban third spaces, makerspaces, fab labs, incubators, accelerators and digital labs. This paper is based on a 2-year project carried out by a network of academics and practitioners interested in new work practices in the collaborative economy, focusing particularly on collaborative workspaces. We concentrate on the relationships between collaboration and these new work practices according to three levels, individual, community and societal, highlighting their spatial and temporal dimensions. Our results indicate that: boundaries between waged employment and entrepreneurship are not rigid; individuals not only suffer from stress in traditional organisations but also of boredom; new collaborative practices imply rethinking their own competences and prospects, often leading to fundamental life changes; co-working communities can provide collective meaning, crucial to supporting these transformations; they can be orientated towards practice, professional identity, and emotional support to address loneliness and sense-making; public discourses about entrepreneurship and innovation and territorial policies are not clearly linked to innovative practices in collaborative spaces. We conclude that there is need for better coordination between public actors and collaborative communities which should be seen at the heart of economic, educational, industrial and cultural policies targeting the city, aiming at collaborating and sharing.