Great insight! I am a licensed real estate agent and had planned to start my own firm targeting new agents specifically because training is lacking in that area. Then, I realized that while I want to focus on training and mentoring I don't necessarily need a brokerage for that, and having one would actually limit my reach to only MY agents.
We've taken Alex's advice regarding building a community before "cutting the ribbon" so we're starting with what we know. I know there is a need for training for new real estate agents. But, that training must include basic business principles which is common to most start- ups, entrepreneurs and small business owners. I figure if we start were we are we can grow from there. I just don't want to get "stuck" in a place that will inhibit innovation and creativity. So, we may be able to start by targeting real estate agents and/or graphic artists (my husband's field) as long as we continue to focus on diversifying the community. Toni On Mar 18, 2:13 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: > While it depends on your definition of industry, based on our > definition there are a lot of industry specific coworking facilities. > In SF area alone examples include The Hub (social entrepreneurs), > Writers Grotto (writers and media), Mission*Social (social > entrepreneurs), Biocurious (biosciences) and many others. > > Also, many of the coworking spaces in the SF area are effectively tech > industry spaces. It's just the nature of the bay area. And > obviously, there are many vertical spaces elsewhere in the US and > world. The rapid growth of collaborative kitchens across the US is > another example. > > We see these spaces as industry mini-clusters. Industrial clusters > are groups of similar or related firms in a defined geographic area > that share common markets, technologies and worker skill needs, and > which are often linked by buyer-seller relationships. Firms and > workers in industry clusters benefit from the advantages that a shared > base of sophisticated, industry specific knowledge brings. > > Silicon Valley in technology, New York in financial services and > Detroit in automobiles are famous examples of large clusters. But > small industrial clusters are also common. We think many of the > vertically oriented coworking spaces exhibit many of the same benefits > as industrial clusters. > > We've done a lot of work looking at coworking spaces that serve social > entrepreneurs (we're hoping to get a paper out on this soon). We've > found that social entrepreneurs in spaces catering to social firms > collaborate more and report higher levels of business networking than > social entrepreneurs that are members of other types of coworking > spaces. We think this is due to the cluster effect. > Having said that, we agree with Alex that diversity of skills, > backgrounds, views and opinions are important. Clusters achieve this > by having a mix of participants from across the industry supply and > demand chains. Large clusters also benefit from the diverse nature of > most broad industries. > > Coworking facilities achieve this by having people from different > professions (designers, programmers, lawyers, etc.) and different > skill sets. This brings strong weak tie benefits (yet another paper > we're trying to finish). > > But we also think vertical coworking spaces could, at least in some > cases, add additional value by bringing together people that are > diverse by profession/skill set, but serve the same broad industry. > > Obviously, little work has been done on this topic. A lot more needs > to be done before drawing strong conclusions. > > Steve > > On Mar 16, 1:11 pm, OC Houston <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Does anyone have an industry specific coworking space? Or, does that > > defeat the purpose of the concept? > > > Toni -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en.
