The Success Stories of 250 Coworking Spaces Around the World

We believe the global coworking community is what creates more success stories of coworking spaces. And we’re always glad to put a spotlight on meaningful projects worth sharing.

Back in early 2021, we sat down with Coworkies co-founders Pauline Roussel and Dimitar Inchev. They’d just finished their book, “Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces,” and we wanted to spread the word about it.

“Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces” is a printed book of curated coworking stories that documents how founders start, grow, and run flexible workspaces around the world, told through the people, spaces, and communities behind them.

The book covers people, workspaces and products that shaped the coworking industry, and gives a picture of the diversity that exists across modern workspaces. It reads as a guide to how people start and build new work environments through collaboration, interior design and community activities.

We talked with Pauline and Dimitar about the book, the pandemic, and the power of community. Here’s our chat.

And if you want to learn more about successful coworking spaces, check the 4 Pillars of Successful Coworking Spaces blog post.

Hi Pauline and Dimitar, can you guys start by introducing yourselves?

Greetings to all of the readers. We are Pauline and Dimitar, Co-Founders of Coworkies. We are a French and Bulgarian who met in a coworking space in Berlin in 2015. Since then we work together on multiple projects, mostly related to coworking.

These projects gravitate around jobs in coworking spaces, how to have better communities and sustainability for workplace communities. While doing this, we travel extensively around the globe to meet the people who are building the world of coworking.

At the time of this interview, we’d visited more than 420 coworking spaces in 47 cities. Spinning from New York to Tokyo, and the many places in between.

And just for the record, there is no such thing as “best coworking space”. Each space is different and suits the needs of a specific customer. As we like to say, coworking is the same dish, each space cooks differently:)

What’s the “Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces” book about and who is it for?

The book shares the stories of 250 coworking spaces from around the world. It’s a mix of answers of When, How, Why and for Who. The stories range from entrepreneurial journeys to the community needs to regional or city specifics.

We hope the book will give readers the opportunity to make their own journey (even through a book), find knowledge and inspiration and get a better understanding of what coworking really is.

We believe that there is no such thing as “the best coworking space”, without at least specifying for who and why. And we hope this book will help more people embrace this understanding.

The book is a good read for coworking space founders or people thinking of starting such a business. It’s also for anyone interested in flexible work environments: professionals involved in the future of work, community building, architecture, and real estate.

They will all gain a lot of knowledge from the personal stories shared in the book.

How did the idea of making a book come to life?

The idea for the book came from the coworking space founders and members we were meeting through the years.

We remember Tomas, architect and Founder of a coworking space called Based In, to be the first who suggested the idea. We were having a chat about his spaces and other spaces we’ve visited. He then said it would be a great idea to create a book that tells the stories of all these coworking spaces.

With time, we started to hear this from more and more people. Also, we started hosting private events called “Around the World of Coworking” in some of the spaces we were visiting.

Later on, in Mumbai, where we were visiting some coworking spaces, we finally decided to make it. We came up with the full name, and it clicked so well that it started our active work on the book, which took us 2 years.

Why did you decide to make a coffee table book and not a blog or an e-book?

This is a really good question and we had to answer it for ourselves before deciding to make the book. Our counter arguments were that we already have a blog and a magazine where we share openly about the people we meet, their spaces, and cities we visit.

So why make a physical book? The answer came from the fact that we are a very small team and we cannot compete with the big outlets online. So how do we make a difference? Coworking space teams are small, they have hundreds of tasks every day, and there’s a lot of online noise.

To reach them we had to do what no one else can, create a product that can be used offline in peace and in a calm state of mind. And that’s why we decided to make this coffee table book.

What useful insights can coworking operators find in the book?

It can give coworking space operators the sense of belonging; that they are not alone. They can learn from other operators across the globe how they deal with challenges and how they work through the day of a coworking space operator.

We’ve taken the #hashtag approach to help readers navigate through the book. So let’s say you are interested in “food” or “education”. You will be able to find the spaces falling into these categories, read their story and learn from their experience in making their space and community successful.

The business value is to create a global understanding that can be applied locally. To double down on that we’ve partnered with two global companies, the office furniture provider Kinnarps and access control provider Salto. They both helped us gain business insights from their case studies on how interior and technology can improve the member experience.

What are coworking operators doing to adapt to the new post-COVID-19 reality?

These were interesting times for the industry globally. When we spoke, the pandemic wasn’t over yet, but it also wasn’t “new” anymore. Spaces understood the challenges and knew what was needed to operate safely.

COVID-19 pushed operators to rethink their member experience within their facility. A lot of them invested in technologies of various kinds (from access control systems to air quality filters and more), adding more data to their spaces to operate with.

For many spaces, it became possible to know how many people are in the space, at any given time, and to monitor where they move around. Using data in coworking, coliving, and flexible workspaces more generally brings new opportunities to do things differently, with concrete numbers and metrics.

We also saw a shift in the way spaces manage their communities. Before the pandemic, most community activities were carried out offline. That changed, and spaces added digital tools to give members value whether they were present in the space or not.

That made coworking reachable from anywhere. Whether you are in Berlin right now and can access your space, or not, you can belong to that community and contribute to it. It also changed the level of memberships to include virtual options of different sorts (virtual office plans, virtual memberships, and more, Ed.)

The rise of remote work for larger companies was a big opportunity coworking spaces were ready to seize all over the world. Attracting a new kind of member, an employee from a larger company, brings novelty to the community as a whole.

It creates more work and learning opportunities for everyone, the new member and the existing ones. There are new community dynamics that spaces need to start thinking about.

Can you give us some COVID-19 highlights from the book?

When we started working on the book, COVID-19 was not on the world’s agenda. When the pandemic hit, we had to pause the project to see how each space we were featuring was adapting, shifting, rethinking its model.

We didn’t want the book to be all about COVID-19, but the pandemic had an impact on every space featured in it. Each space adapted differently because of a few factors:

• Its locality: whether they are based in Asia, Africa, Europe, North or South America, COVID-19 hit everyone differently because of the time the virus reached them, and because of how their local government reacted (you can check the coworking industry report by CoworkIntel, Ed.). Which brings me to the second point.
• Support from the local government: in certain parts of the world, flexible workspaces (including coworking, makerspaces, etc.) were recognized and supported by their governments and were asked to follow certain guidelines; in other countries, they were left in the middle, not exactly an office, not a hotel or a restaurant, and had to figure out what to do by themselves.

Those two factors shaped their response and transition as well.

• Some of the spaces featured in the book told us COVID-19 helped them refocus. That term came up a lot in our conversations with them. Refocus of their space, their community, their business model, their marketing, and more.
• With certain spaces, particularly makerspaces, COVID-19 brought a lot of opportunities. From printing face shields to launching online stores, full production lines, and more, makerspaces played a key role locally in many regions.
• A lot of the spaces we featured received great support from their members in various ways, which was a good validation that their work was meaningful to many.
• For a few, there was still a lot of uncertainty, mainly because their region was still heavily impacted or in lockdown.

What is the role of the community, the power of coworking, especially in times of COVID-19?

Community is key. The word has been overused, and frankly abused, in the last years. COVID-19 helped it heal. Many people understood the power of their community, how it helps them and why they need it.

As we started to say earlier in this interview, coworking spaces learned through the pandemic that managing a community doesn’t just happen offline anymore.

2020 taught everyone how to engage with members digitally, accepting that things are different and that members might not show up the same way they would if they were all in the same space.

But they do show up. At their own rhythm. Members embraced the digital space provided by coworking spaces to:

• Motivate themselves to wake up and get dressed in the morning.
• Find a new working rhythm, and know when to stop by attending an event at the end of the day to wrap things up with others, because when you work from home, it’s easier to work endlessly.
• Take care of themselves through well-being events spaces organized. A lot of spaces told us members finally welcomed yoga or meditation during the pandemic because they needed something to help them stay calm and focused.

And yes, there might be zoom fatigue, or members might really want to go back to human contact and to their workplace. A space from the book told us members cried of happiness when they could go back there.

Somehow, everyone understood that navigating through COVID-19 is also a community effort. The more we follow the guidelines locally altogether, the faster we go out of this together.

Members embraced their communities in new ways, and spaces learned with them how to do that.

Where can people find the book?

The book started as a 30-day Kickstarter campaign, which the coworking and coliving community backed to bring the project to life. That campaign succeeded, and the book was printed and published.

“Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces” is now available directly from the official book website. It’s a 352-page printed book covering 250 coworking spaces across 6 continents, with founder stories and 3 case studies on interior design, access control, and starting a coworking space. It sells for 79 EUR (about 85 USD), and each order includes a one-year subscription to the Coworkies Readers Club.

Frequently asked questions

What is “Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces”?

It’s a printed coffee table book by Coworkies co-founders Pauline Roussel and Dimitar Inchev that documents the founding stories of 250 coworking spaces across 6 continents, plus 3 case studies on space design, access control, and starting a coworking space. The authors visited more than 500 coworking spaces in 53 cities to gather the stories.

Where can I buy the book?

You can order it directly from coworkiesbook.com. It costs 79 EUR (roughly 85 USD), and each order comes with a one-year Coworkies Readers Club subscription.

Who is the book for?

Coworking space founders and operators, people planning to open a space, and anyone working in the future of work, community building, architecture, or commercial real estate. Universities and associations also use it as a teaching resource.

What’s the best coworking space?

There isn’t one. As Pauline and Dimitar put it, each community is different and suits the needs of specific members. The book’s premise is that “best” only means something once you specify for whom and why.

How can OfficeRnD Flex help coworking operators run their space?

OfficeRnD Flex is a coworking management platform that handles billing, membership plans, bookings, and member communication in one place, so operators spend less time on admin and more time on community.

If you’re curious about more success stories of coworking spaces, check out how OfficeRnD helps operators take their business to a whole new level.