Coworking: new challenges in online mode

Brad Neuberg, who 9 years ago founded the Coworking movement in San Francisco, would certainly not imagine the impact this simple concept came to have in people and organizations life, transforming definitely the way thousands of people work worldwide.

Today, the Coworking is more than a movement and a tendency. If there are typical signs that a market is healthy, mature and competitive they reside in its innovation levels - technological or not - and in its attempts of disruption through new ideas and concepts. Today, the Coworking continues not only on accelerated global growth (it is foreseen to go from the current 3.500 to 13.500 in 2018) as it also shows all this signs of vitality, transforming itself in an authentic industry on a global scale.

The way technology came to change how people and organizations work - giving them a higher mobility, flexibility and efficiency - contributed, and a lot, to the dissemination of coworking.  The strong innovation - whether technologic or in the type of spaces or services available - it was clearly visible last month in Lisbon, where occurred the 4th edition of the Coworking Europe Conference, which gathered around 300 people and more than 50 speakers from the 4 continents.

Together with innovation also disruptive attempts of Coworking start to emerge. One of the more recent and possibly the most controversial - but future will tell - comes by the name of Nomatik Coworking and relies on a technological platform. It is an  online/offline coworking platform which connects (on-line) professionals with common interests and needs allowing them to work together (offline).

The objective, they ensure, is, on the one side, to create opportunities for freelancers and, on the other side, to work as a connection between companies and freelancers in common projects. Behind this concept is a simple evidence. Today, 35% of the north American workforce is freelancer. In 2020, it will be 40%. Currently studies point that the so called Y and Z generations will be constituted in its major part by freelancers and entrepreneurs searching for a life style that guarantees them a major flexibility, more autonomy in their career and financial return. Companies gradually also start to adjust to this reality and the recent cases of the north-Americans Coca-Cola and Zappos are just an example of this new paradigm.

The eyes are set on the Nomatik project which will start in the United States in the coming weeks. If it avenges and succeeds it will also have impact in one of the key concepts of the coworking spirit which undergoes "get people out" of home and coffee shops, replacing isolation by personal contact with other professionals in collaborative spaces, where the partnership and networking spirit bubble.

The market and the future shall ensure to show if this concept will avenge in online mode, but this initiative reveals how healthy, mature and competitive is today the Coworking sector.