Questão 563467

Coworking: Sharing How We Work

Genevieve DeGuzman

Communication

In the past, when trying to find places to work,

independent workers, small businesses, and

organizations often had to choose between several

scenarios, all with their attendant advantages and

5 disadvantages: working from home; working from a

coffee shop, library, or other public venue; or leasing

an executive suite or other commercial space.

Is there a better way to work? Yes. Enter

coworking.

10 ___ Coworking takes freelancers, indie workers, andCoworking takes freelancers, indie workers, and

entrepreneurs who feel that they have been dormant

or isolated working alone at home or who have been

migrating from a coffee shop to a friend’s garage or

languishing in a sterile business center — to a space

15 where they can truly roost.

“We can come out of hiding,” a coworker tells

us, “and be in a space that’s comfortable, friendly,

and has an aesthetic appeal that’s a far cry from the

typical cookie-cutter office environment.”

20 ___ For many, it might be puzzling to pay for a well-For many, it might be puzzling to pay for a well-

equipped space teeming with other people, even

with the chance of free coffee and inspiration. You

might ask yourself, “Well, why pay for a place to work

when I’m perfectly comfortable at home and paying

25 nothing?” Or, “Isn’t the whole point of telecommuting

or starting my own business a chance to avoid ‘going

to the office’?”

Coworking may sound like an unnecessary

expense, but let’s consider what you get from being

30 a part of the space.

At its most basic level, coworking is the

phenomenon of workers coming together in a shared

or collaborative workspace for one or more of these

reasons: to reduce costs by having shared facilities

35 and equipment, to access a community of fellow

entrepreneurs, and to seek out collaboration within

and across fields. Coworking spaces offer an exciting

alternative for people longing to escape the confines

of their cubicle walls, the isolation of working solo at

40 home, or the inconveniences of public venues.

The benefits and cost-savings in productivity

and overall happiness and well-being reaped from

coworking are also potentially huge. Enthusiasm

and creativity become contagious and multiply when

45 you diversify your work environment with people

from different fields or backgrounds. At coworking

spaces, members pass each other during the day,

conversations get going, and miraculously idea-fusion

happens with everyone benefitting from the shared

50 thinking and brainstorming.

Differences matter. Coworking hinges on the

belief that innovation and inspiration come from

the cross-pollination of different people in different

fields or specializations. Random opportunities and

55 discoveries that arise from interactions with others

play a large role in coworking.

To see this in action on a large scale, think about

Google. Google made the culture of sharing and

collaboration in the workplace legend. It deployed

60 “grouplets” for initiatives that cover broader changes

through the organization.

One remarkable story of a successful Google

grouplet involved getting engineers to write their

own testing code to reduce the incidence of bugs

65 in software code. Thinking creatively, the grouplet

came up with a campaign based on posting episodes

discussing new and interesting testing techniques

on the bathroom stalls. “Testing on the Toilet” spread

fast and garnered both rants and raves. Soon, people

70 were hungry for more, and the campaign ultimately

developed enough inertia to become a de facto part of

the coding culture. They moved out of the restrooms

and into the mainstream.

Keith Sawyer, a professor of psychology and

75 education at Washington University in St. Louis, MO,

has written widely on collaboration and innovation. In

his study of jazz performances, Keith Sawyer made

this observation, “The group has the ideas, not the

individual musicians.” Some of the most famous

80 products were born out of this mosh pit of interaction

— in contrast to the romantic idea of a lone working

genius driving change. According to Sawyer, more

often than not, true innovation emerges from an

improvised process and draws from trial-by-error and

85 many inputs.

Unexpected insights emerge from the group

dynamic. If increasing interaction among different

peer groups within a single company could lead

to promising results, imagine the possibilities for

90 solopreneurs, small businesses, and indie workers —

if only they could reach similar levels of peer access

as those experienced by their bigger counterparts. It

is this potential that coworking tries to capture for its

members.

Available at: <http://workawesome.com/productivity/coworking/>. Retrieved on: 21 Oct. 2011. Adapted.

The expression indie workers, found in lines 10 and 90, refers to