WeWork is sharing at work.

WeWork has launched a huge new co-working space in London: based on the fact that startups in communities learn mostly from each other, WeWork provides flexible work space that encourages the sharing of experience.

In WeWork’s concept, designs and operations, sharing experience is fundamental:

•      it creates physical communities – of work spaces
•      it creates social communities – of business developers
•      it creates internet communities for them
•      and it aspires to creating international communities.

Its latest work space in London – the largest co-working space in Europe – is designed to maximize encounters (‘70% of members make use of other businesses in the building’): it is in the shape of a cube, with an atrium in its centre; and almost all of its internal walls are glass.

With 3,100 work spaces across 7 floors, each floor has a wide variety of different size offices and well-equipped meeting rooms, with every office need catered for (copying, document handling, private phones etc). In any incubator, a large kitchen/diner is a great place for unexpected encounters; and small meeting groups a great place for problem-solving.

Here, each floor has a large communal meeting area where there is a café providing food and drink and a bar for beer. Opened in July 2015, it is already 80% full and expected to be completely full by March or April 2016.

With a buzz of intensity and enthusiasm, it feels like a market place of entrepreneurs, in which every encounter may have possibilities. There events for members every day – about such things as Yoga, marketing, Pilates or legals. And an Entrepreneur-in-residence has just been appointed, with whom you can book sessions. On the first floor, there is a games area, where there is darts and a Table Tennis table. And there are personal services on the premises, such as hairdressing; and a reception service for deliveries eg of online orders.

Membership – on a monthly basis – provides you with a key, a T-shirt and a password.

The latter gives you access to the WeWork App, on which you put up information about you and your business, and where there is a Wants Wall where you can post recommendations, news etc; and you can pin up your current needs, and expect someone to come back to you who will tell you about how they solved that problem – either from your own work space or another location.

Started by two entrepreneurs in New York in 2011, WeWork now has 42,000 desk spaces in 63 locations, many of them in the US but fast expanding elsewhere, though none yet in the UK outside London (where there are already 6,000 WeWork desk spaces). Membership also gives you access to WeWork facilities in other locations and even in other countries.

At around £425 a desk per month, it is well priced for its City location. While its pricing favours small companies, WeWork also has its larger ones: Skyscanner and Bla Bla Car among them (unsurprisingly both internet based.)

What distinguishes WeWork is its size and its focus on mutual connections. It is unlike Google Campus, the Hub and most other co-working spaces in that it is more of a co-development space. It is unlike the Tramperies in that it is not sector specific; and unlike Accelerators and mutual support groups in that mentoring is not part of the deal.

 We Work is unique – as about sharing at work.

John Whatmore, February 2016

See also: Co-working spaces are designed to promote change and action in Silicon Valley’s megaliths

Silicon Valley’s megaliths are passionate about change and about providing working environments that will echo their mission – to challenge the present and to develop the future. Nothing is exempt: projects, teams, spaces, furnishings, messages, are all designed to provide relentless pressure to try something new. http://wp.me/p3beJt-7P