Creating for Collaboration

When Adam, Matt and I created WeWork Labs a little over two years ago we never dreamed it would grow into the community it is today. We were looking for a place to hunker down with other entrepreneurs working on cool projects who were, most importantly, at the same stage in their business’ lifecycle — crazy, hungry and early. Everyone in the space would need a lot of the same resources with an extra-large helping of collaboration.

Creating a space that fosters collaboration is delicate and it’s definitely not a science. If you force people to interact, they probably won’t get a whole lot of value out of collaborating. If you sit back and wait, it might not happen. Really it comes down to designing the right space, offering the right programs and choosing the right people.

The Right Space

First we started off by building a beautiful space with lots of light, open desks and enough private areas to get work done. It sounds simple but it’s not. Today we have three WeWork Labs locations across three cities and we continue to iterate and make changes to their layouts and designs often. In our first location we didn’t have enough open seating. Our second had too much of it. And when we entered San Francisco it was a bit too dark downstairs (sorry dedicated desk peeps, we’re working on it). Each location comes with it’s own charm and it’s own challenges.

The Right Programs

I’m not talking about education, education, education. I mean programs of all shapes and sizes including the combination of awesome classes, great happy hours and even better office hours. We decided early on to not only rely on our community but to take the time to bring in support from the outside. We’ve held Skillshare classes, we’ve had office hours with tons of investors and we always make sure to take a bit of time to have fun by throwing a happy hour or a party to keep people loose and creative. It takes all of these programs and more to make really make the collaboration engine purr.

The Right People

This is hardest part. It’s not about bringing in your best friends, it’s about bringing in people who could become best friends — or best business partners.

There are type-A and type-B people and it takes a smart combination of both. Sure, everyone needs to understand that it might get a bit noisy people enjoy a good beverage in the afternoon and sometimes they may get sucked into a game of NBA JAM. But everyone in the community has to be open to sharing ideas and resources. As long as this is set from the beginning, people will naturally find their clique and their groove.

As I mentioned, creating for collaboration isn’t a science and we’re just at the beginning of figuring out how all of the pieces fit together. But I know that we’re on to something with over 450 people working on some amazing projects here in Labs. I hope this post can at least get the wheels turning in your head about how to design a really collaborative workspace too.