Coworking spaces in innovative environments compared: Does the local-regional embeddedness matter?

Among the various forms of " open creative labs " , coworking spaces seem to play a preeminent role, being an important element of the undergoing transformation of contemporary work organisation (Moriset, 2013). While it is just one form among others, we will deliberately focus our analysis on this particular type, reflecting perhaps the best the increasing newly demands of highly qualified self-employed creative labour in the context of the recent renaissance of independent work. Coworking spaces have been founded first in the major urban locations (Suire, 2013), mostly downtown, before spreading out over second tier cities and in less central places. They are today so numerous and disseminated that we find them in many small and medium-sized cities and sometimes even in the countryside. This phenomenon raises the question about the transferability of the form of the coworking space to any imaginable place: can coworking spaces locate or be created everywhere? Do the apparent similarities between the coworking spaces (similar forms of functioning, similar type of users/co-workers, similar resources in form of infrastructure and services provided) not hide more profound differences that distinguish coworking spaces in function of the concrete characteristics of the socioeconomic and the geographic environment? In the paper proposed, we suggest to have a closer look at the new phenomenon of coworking spaces outside central, metropolitan areas. Our analyses will be based on comparative empirical research realised in Brittany (France) and Baden-Württemberg (Germany), using cases located in two middle-sized cities (between 80.000 and 90.000 inhabitants) and two smaller communities (between 8.000 and 14.000 inhabitants).