I'm chiming in late to this thread, I have had some thoughts I wanted to share on the topic, but only finding the time now.
Hope it's still welcome. :) I do think there is a role for *Coworking spaces as incubators* to a certain extent, with a role more in the *ideation-phase of a Startup*. And perhaps some in the early stages, with *pre-seed* and *early seed startups* . The community we serve is diverse, probably like much of you folks operating a coworking space, it includes sole-practitioners, solo-entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, and telecommuters, and definitely web, tech (and some other) Startups. We've definitely seen Startups born within Office Divvy: Either with those who joined at the ideation or pre-seed stage, and some got created as a result of organic collaboration among members. The landscape we operate in, Palm Coast & Flagler County, Florida, is semi-urban, and mostly suburban area. The whole County's population is under 100,000. *Incubator*, is just becoming a buzz word here recently; I see the County Administration little by little entertaining the idea of starting one. In my opinion a "Business Incubator" is a passé concept. I hate to see already limited, and stretched tax dollars here wasted by starting a government-sponsored incubator. Based on my observations, this type of an incubator often serves those involved in the incubator (a City, a County, a Higher Institution or a combination of all three) more than those intended to be served. A good example of it is not far from where we operate: There is a University of Central Florida (UCF) Incubator in Daytona Beach, about 30-minutes from here, which mostly had been a sad story --empty, not finding proper "clients," and not really finding its own identity. Recently, they also launched a sad attempt offering a "coworking" component as well --certainly that went nowhere. I see the differentiation with the Coworking movement as a grassroots attempt; and not a top down, superficial effort. That is culturally parallel to the overall Startup culture. It's nearly impossible for traditionally wired folks to start an entity or a space to help the true entrepreneur, the true Startup founder under what how they would imagine an incubator to be. In that sense, I am not afraid of defending our space. I believe that is the right thing to do for Office Divvy, as well as for the benefit of the community we live in. I've done just that in this interview about our launch of a second location, by offering ideas in the portion on Coworking as An Incubator, and by talking about the types of businesses that will matter for economic development in the next decade or two: * http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20130922/BUSINESS/130929869/1033?p=1&tc=pg * Ky Ekinci on twitter: @KyEkinci <http://twitter.com/KyEkinci> | @OfficeDivvy<http://twitter.com/OfficeDivvy> -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
