Corenet Amsterdam Summit

The annual European Corenet summit was held in Amsterdam this year set amongst the city’s wonderful canals and eclectic buildings.

This year’s event tried to address pressing issues relating to the fast paced changes being made in the Corporate Real Estate industry. Geopolitical events, the global economy, sustainability, and advances in technology all influence the way organisations behave. The speed of change accelerates the need for CRE to move faster on a global scale.

So to thrive organisations need to be agile and dynamic.

One of the more interesting sessions revolved around the “flexible market” of Incubators, Accelerators and Co-Working environments. These new real estate disruptors have had a dramatic impact on the property market not only in London but across the globe.

In 2002 when we designed arguably the very first Co-Working space for E-Office in Soho, It was the only real alternative to the serviced office, not to mention business continuity space and managed workspaces.

What businesses like E-Office had was a desire to offer something tangibly different supported with a passion to actually make that difference. Nowadays businesses such as We Work and The Office Group (TOG) bring scale along with that diversity and passion.

TOG clearly know what they want. Its definitely not small businesses holed up above a shop, but to work in spaces they can be proud to bring clients to. They have a particular aesthetic and whilst they may need to evolve it, COO Charlie Green thinks WeWork are so successful because they positioned themselves as a disruptor with a particular aesthetic.

TOG fundamentally understand what business models work and which one’s don’t. They are about open doors and have a warm approach to “welcome”. Offering natural choice in the way people want to work. Each location appeals to different types of user groups. Why ostracise accountants just because of what they do!

So what comes after Co-working?

There will be more ubiquitous partnerships between incubators and large corporate requirements. TOG were recently approached to supply a 30,000ft2  space, which they declined as that scale is not their model. The client was keen to partner with TOG  to understand how workplace activity might affect their requirements, something reflected in the variety and choice offered by TOG’s spaces.

So will the markets of traditional office requirement morph and assimilate the Incubators, Accelerators and Co-Working Hubs?

There are strong signs that they will. Our recent experiences with Whitbread Digital certainly suggest that. Workplaces which in reality could be deemed more a Co-Working space than a traditional office because they encourage freedom and choice in the way people want to work.

The trick is to ensure the Co-Working model doesn’t become the new Open-Plan. A one-size-fits-all principal applied to all workplaces. The right approach is to understand people, process and place to create a model bespoke to the business, influenced by knowledge gathered form the market.

By facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing businesses are finding the results much more productive than before. Not because it’s new but because it delivers successful campaigns.

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