Collaborative Workspace companies as transregional connectors of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems?

Abstract

In the last 10 to 15 years, the Collaborative Workspace (CWS) industry has grown significantly. By now, CWS are a global phenomenon (Avdikos & Pettas, 2021). This rapidly expanding industry includes profit-oriented CWS chains with several hundreds of locations around the globe such as WeWork or Spaces. On the other hand, there is a significant number of smaller CWS with only one or a limited number of locations, sometimes within one country and in other cases spanning over different countries and even continents. These CWS show differences in their orientation and target customers (e.g., freelancers, industry specific communities, established companies, entrepreneurs). This paper focuses on CWS with a strong orientation towards supporting entrepreneurship. For example, the website of an Indian CWS with three locations across the country pronounces: “Oplus Coworking Space is not only about the physical office space, but about establishing the entrepreneurs community first.” (Oplus | Coworking Space | Office Space for Rent, 2022). As this citation shows, CWS are players in building entrepreneurial networks and culture. Entrepreneurial networks and culture are an important element in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EE) (Stam, 2015).

EEs serve to foster entrepreneurship and are in short a “conceptual umbrella for the benefits and resources produced by a cohesive, typically regional, community of entrepreneurs and their supporters that help new high-growth ventures form, survive, and expand” (Spigel & Harrison, 2018, p. 152). EEs are thought of as having a crucial significance for the economic development of a region in their function of supporting innovative entrepreneurship. The EE literature is rapidly expanding and is addressing more and more the spatial organization of EEs (Fischer, Meissner, Vonortas, & Guerrero, 2022). One important new discussion strand here is asking how EEs are connected to other EEs (Schäfer, 2021). In this paper, I explore how CWS with more than one location connect EEs through their organizational ties. The central question is how elements of the entrepreneurial culture, knowledge, and networks are mitigated and transferred through transregional and transnational CWS companies and organizations. Special emphasis will be put on the questions of the mitigation of entrepreneurial values and trends such as sustainability and digitalization.