Is It Possible to Innovate Work Organization? Ideas and Inspirations from Coworking Experiences

Coworking is a recent phenomenon, but it is spreading and, even more importantly, it is evolving rapidly. It originated as a relatively simple way for freelancers to share work spaces, services and equipment in order to reduce individual costs. In most advanced cases, coworking organizations are turning into organizational settings in which truly novel work arrangements provide interesting new ideas and inspirations about how to bring about not only innovation in job design and work organization, but also a new way to construct individual and organizational identity. In this paper we will briefly describe how most advanced coworking organizations function, and we will reflect on some key elements that characterize them. We will also discuss about whether, and at what conditions, traditional companies and organizations can learn from such experiences.