Explore our coworking solutions.

The OpenWork Turnkey Coworking Development Model streamlines processes and maximizes effective rollouts. This is a scalable and repeatable process for all types of workplaces. Explore our coworking development components.

Adapt your culture to the requirements of remote work. Connecting and aligning a distributed workforce, whether employees are at home or at a coworking space or coffee shop, requires an open-source approach that draws from many existing technologies and tools. That requires not only a mindset shift, but a culture shift.  

What is today’s hybrid workplace? View our diagram.

A collection of work ambiance videos to help you find your optimal flow, wherever you are.

Multifamily residential communities, especially those located within thoughtfully designed mixed-use projects, are becoming important locations and potential revenue sources in what is a new phase of urban planning and development.

Are we trying to protect the old ways? Or is it time for a new perspective?

Given the current circumstances that we are all in, we are beginning to look at alternative ways of working.

Where/how will your employees likely be working in the next year or two? What is the real estate impact to your bottom line? Using scenario modeling we can anticipate possible futures and be better prepared for success.

Over the past seven years we have conducted coworking feasibility assessments for numerous real estate projects around the world. Most of the projects have been with building owners and developers interested in diversifying their portfolios by ‘getting into coworking.’ Now we are offering a Corporate Coworking Feasibility for companies who are assessing their hybrid workplace strategy.

Equipped with your company’s unique data, we prepare a thorough report that analyzes the data and provides our recommendations for an effective COVID-19 workplace strategy. A comprehensive report is delivered as a media-rich PDF.

 This video gives a typical work day experience for a work from home professional. From waking up in the morning, through lunch, until calling it a day. Working from home is part of the new hybrid workplace. When we can empower the workforce to work where, when, and how they choose- then we have…

Explore our categized list of remote working tools and resources. 

Contradictions: Inclusive Design for All Generations Wednesday, June 17 10:00am–11:00am CDT [NC017 CEU] In light of the current health crisis we will examine the inherent challenges designers face when dealing with five generations in the workforce to provide choices of where, how, when and with whom they work to enhance user experience and performance. In this…

In this white paper we look at the challenges that the coworking industry faces in light of the current crisis, and provide three scenarios that explore what might unfold in the coming years. Each of the three scenarios will require adaptation and innovation among coworking operators, some more than others.

Hello, Welcome to the first issue of our newsletter- Humans @Work. In this series we will share some of our own thoughts as well as those of other companies and individuals who inspire us. We hope you find it useful, and we would love to hear from you.Thanks,         Well before the…

Since the pandemic began millions of Americans have been forced to use technologies in ways that they never knew they could. Zoom (and ‘zoom calls’) has become a household name in short order. Slack, the simple messaging platform, has also quickly leaped the chasm of adoption. From ordering groceries online to conducting all of one’s work online, we have collectively been through a shift of rapid adoption that is historic.

In a previous book- The Fifth Age of Work– I began with a simple but perhaps odd question: What would HR in a company look like if a designer were put in charge? I tried to answer that question as best as I could, but I think that discussion was probably about 15 minutes early. Binary Impasse…

Anyone can start a coworking space. If planned effectively, it’s possible to secure financial backing from lending institutions or local angel investors. As the world’s first coworking consultancy (serving coworking startups since 2014 and players in the industry since 2008), we’ve received inquiries from a wide spectrum of types who have entertained the notion of…

In a much overlooked 2007 article, “Dignity at Work” (in the journal Organization), sociologist Andrew Sayer outlines the connections between employee autonomy, trust in employees, respect for their work, and being taken seriously as the foundations for what he calls ‘dignity at work.’ Sayer was approaching the subject from perhaps a more critical perspective than most corporate decision…

What’s in a word? Or a phrase? Over the past thirty years companies of all stripes and sizes have embraced the concept of activity based working (ABW). ABW is a workplace strategy where employees do not have a fixed office or workstation, but rather work in different areas of an office depending on the type…

Too often, office design ignores this and proceeds to lavish wasteful workspaces on the company’s senior executives while relegating rank and file employees to supposedly “collaborative” open plan offices. Any truly open and innovative company culture starts with workspaces that reflect the signature values of the company. What are those values, and how are they…

OpenWork Founding Partner, Andrew Jones, recently published a guest article in Today’s Hotelier. The article, discussing the growing trend of Hotel Coworking, opens the door to the opportunity of embracing the coworking model within the existing hospitality industry ecosystem. Read the article, Your (Meeting) Room is Now Ready.

Over the past five years we at the OpenWork Agency have helped real estate developers and entrepreneurs around the world with their various “coworking” projects. I use quotes here because for anyone familiar with the original coworking 1.0 movement, these projects are typically much less ‘coworking’ and much more ‘office.’ That is, the very notion of coworking…

Coworking Grows Up In a little over a decade coworking has grown from being a scrappy officing solution for freelancers and startups into a multibillion dollar industry with thousands of operators around the world.[1] Defined as ‘a multi-company campus for companies of all sizes,’ coworking has established itself as a viable workplace arrangement for the sharing economy. Industry unicorn,…

A turnkey consulting solution managed online- from concept to launch. AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — OpenWork Agency, a global coworking consultancy, has announced the launch of a Consulting as a Service (CaaS) offering for asset owners, real estate investors and developers. Managed online, the platform guides clients through eight phases of the coworking business development process. …

Coworking is not that big a deal In some ways many of us make too big a deal about coworking. One could argue, as some do, that it is just a (different) place to work. Like just desks and chairs, punctuated by locally roasted coffee and craft beer. And, frankly, there is something to this…

Puzzles & Roadmaps “Since when did employee engagement in our tenant companies become our business?” The Chief Strategy Officer of one of Singapore’s largest REITs posed the question in the middle of a tense session about how they were looking to reposition their office portfolio. They wanted to ‘activate’ some of their offices buildings in such a way to…

Over the past decade  more and more companies- small, medium, and large- have embraced coworking as part of their workplace strategy. It is now widely accepted that coworking is no longer just for freelancers, startups, and solopreneurs. When firms such as IBM, Amazon, and UBS take up whole buildings under WeWork’s coworking management system, it…

As I have suggested recently, the key drivers behind the growth of corporate coworking have been for the most part real estate drivers. The economics of this simply make sense, despite the skeptics. If one looks only narrowly at the price per square foot for a workstation in a private office in a coworking space (such…

Twenty five percent of WeWork’s members are ‘corporate coworkers,’ and the company now boasts that 22% of the Fortune 500 companies have employees who work in their spaces. At the current rate of growth, some 40-50% of coworking members will be corporate users within five to seven years. With firms such as GE, Samsung, Microsoft, Dell, HSBC, Accenture,…

In the spirit of today being Independence Day (in the USA), it felt especially fitting to honor the global discussion around company policies that encourage independence within the evolving employee workforce. At OpenWork Agency we believe that employees who are honored with choice, flexibility, autonomy, and decision-making rights are more productive, healthier, and ultimately contribute to a…

Introduction As software, AI, IoT, and robotics swallow more and more of the world (as Marc Andreessen suggested they would), it is natural to wonder what the role will be for people?  For years we’ve heard corporate leaders, as well as their HR lieutenants, tell us that their people are ‘their most important assets,’ but…

Introduction Research on CEO priorities consistently shows that innovation remains a top priority for most corporate leaders.  This has been the case for well over a decade. Which company, or company leader, would not want their companies to grow through innovation? The challenge, when push comes to shove, is how to get to innovation?  At…

Over the past eight years coworking has gone from being a social movement to being a bona fide industry.  As asset owners and real estate professionals learn more about the significant rent arbitrage potential, and as investors and lenders become more comfortable with the risk profile of coworking businesses, the floodgates have opened up.  VC…

Introduction According to the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, scientific paradigms change only at glacial speed. Even as evidence in a particular scientific field mounts to challenge existing theory, a field’s professionals, institutions, associations, and journals often acknowledge and embrace the new paradigm over the course of a generation. This is clearly happening in the…

Please join PDR for 18HX— Eighteen Hacks Enjoy craft drinks, small bites and inspiring conversation among friends. 18HX brings together a panel of six expert “hackers” who traffic in Cultural Capital. Each of our guests will reveal how they are actively reprogramming the realms of Hospitality, Social Impact, Brand Identity, Data Science, Real Estate and Workplace Engineering. Come learn eighteen…

As part of being in the coworking industry since its inception, operating coworking spaces, consulting with coworking operators and real estate developers, participating in (and running) global coworking and workspace conferences, it’s our job at OpenWork to stay-in-the-know regarding innovations (and disruptions) in our industry. We share a lot on social media about coworking, the…

In my current book project (tentatively called “After Corporate Culture”), I am trying to understand the long-term impact that fluid and mobile working is having on company culture. For quite some time, of course, many firms have allowed, either officially or unofficially, employees to work from home or off-site at least some of the time. However, as…

Are You Ready? For the past four years we have been closely watching as more and more mainstream users have embraced coworking as a new way of working. What at first seemed like a fringe phenomenon that was suited primarily for freelancers and startups has grown to be much more than this. Recently, while walking through a…

Culture Past and Future In his 2015 Wall Street Journal article, “Data is our New Middle Manager,” Christopher Mims chronicles the emerging management practices of lean startups. The article suggests that, in an era of radical transparency where ALL employees have access to ALL the relevant data that impacts a company (small or large), there is less…

As long-standing participants in the coworking industry, the partners at OpenWork Agency have seen the industry evolve since the beginning. What was once a social movement is now a sure enough industry. Depending on what your vantage point is, though, coworking is different things to different people. In this article I reflect on some of…

Marc Andreessen once famously said that ‘software is eating the world,’ and that if your business can’t be boiled down to a simple (software) solution it probably doesn’t have much of a chance. Or at least, in his world of venture investing, if your startup isn’t predicated on an elegant piece of software, then your…

It was recently announced that WeWork, the global coworking chain, has signed a deal to manage an entire office building for IBM in Manhattan. Up to 800 employees will work in the building, which WeWork will manage as a single shared office environment.  At first glance this looks like it is just an extension of…

Why/how does coworking work for company teams? Data demonstrate that engaged employees are more productive employees than their disengaged counterparts, and the data on employee engagement is abysmal.  According to a 2014 Gallup poll, less than one-third (31.5%) of U.S. workers were actively engaged in their work, meaning well over half of American employees were…

While some may still aspire to work in a “corner office”, many others are embracing the Workplace of the Future. All over Houston, employers are redefining the term “office”. What are architects, interior designers, general contractors and project managers being asked to include in their future buildings and corporate campuses? And what will building owners…

Drew Jones and @davidhwalker of @OpenWorkAgency explore the intersections between #coworking and the business world https://t.co/eV7GXbex2B — ShareDesk (@ShareDesk) October 20, 2016

Our experienced coworking leaders have worked with cities, economic development groups, and non-profits that want to better their communities through coworking and collaboration. The team comes from all over the US and can relate and develop plans for small towns that are struggling to keep young people to cities that need to capture the entrepreneurial…

Bloomberg BusinessWeek “Coworking Spaces are Going Corporate” By Patrick Clark, 2/19/2016 Corporate Coworking Program:

Crain’s Chicago Business “The Incredible Shrinking HQ” by Claire Bushey, 1/30/2016  

See you at @GCUCUSA in Los Angeles? May 3… We’ll be there! Use code OPENWORK for 10% off #FutureofWork #coworking https://t.co/xcnnJwftWu — OpenWork (@OpenWorkAgency) March 28, 2016