Some data to show your colleague who has gone to a Coworking twice that you know more than him 😁
Numbers and territorial development
Coworking in Italy is a variegated and rapidly evolving system, not only in numerical and economic terms, but also as an organizational model. Within the limits determined by the heterogeneity of the system and its continuous evolution, a description of the phenomenon is proposed based on the data collected by Italian Coworking updated in November 2019.
At the beginning of 2010 there were perhaps a dozen shared work spaces, designed to accommodate professionals and businesses who work independently, almost all concentrated in the large cities of central-northern Italy.
Today, coworking has grown rapidly across the country. At the date of this article, there are 739 (source Italian coworking), roughly 1 coworking for every 84,000 inhabitants.
The 60% of coworking operates in Northern Italy (425) with a prevalence in the North-West and a more sustained growth than in the rest of the country. Lombardy, in particular, is undoubtedly the region where they are most present, not only because more than ¼ of Italian coworking spaces are concentrated here, but also because here there is the highest offer of spaces per inhabitant (1 coworking space for every 52 thousand ab.)
Italian coworking is no longer a reality limited to large cities. Looking at the total number, more than 1 space out of 4 is located in an agglomeration of less than 50,000 inhabitants and half of these work in municipalities of less than 20,000.
In small municipalities close to metropolitan areas, what we could call coworking for commuters (Commuting coworking) is being experimented with, which with the emergence of smartworking (agile working) offers the advantage of working close to home on some days a week.
Areas of potential for expansion
| Common | # Coworking nov. 2019 | Diff. December 2018 | % Coworking | Resident population | % pop. resident | Coworking / resident population rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| <20K | 117 | +16 | 17 | 28.224.159 | 48 | 241.232 |
| > 20K <50k | 99 | +8 | 14 | 11.128.088 | 19 | 112.405 |
| > 50K <100k | 105 | +3 | 15 | 6.393.074 | 11 | 60.886 |
| > 100K <500k | 179 | -4 | 25 | 6.731.014 | 11 | 37.603 |
| > 500k | 204 | +20 | 29 | 6.731.014 | 11 | 32.995 |
| Italy | 704 | +39 | 100 | 59.207.349 | 100 | 84.101 |
Looking at a crude indicator like that of population density, it is clear that there are still many margins for growth for coworking in Italy, both in large cities (over 100 thousand inhabitants) and in small ones.
On average in the larger urban centers (over 100 thousand inhabitants) there is currently 1 coworking for every 37 thousand inhabitants, while in the medium-sized municipalities (50–100 thousand inhabitants) the density decreases considerably (and obviously) until it reaches 1 coworking for over 240 thousand inhabitants in municipalities under 20 thousand.
A fundamental fact to reflect on is that this number of coworking was going to satisfy a part of the approximately 570,000 smart workers present in 2019. But today we are facing a world that has radically changed its skin.
The forced and emergency experience that over 6.5 million workers had during the lockdown last spring and this winter has dramatically highlighted how "the traditional organization of work is based on assumptions that are now largely outdated and clearly inadequate to interpret the era in which we live" to use the words of Professor Mariano Corso, scientific director of the Smart Working Observatory of the School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan
According to Observatory data, more than 5 million smart workers will continue to work remotely in the post-pandemic period for up to 3 days a week, creating a huge investment and development opportunity for the sector.
The Smart Working Curve
Once the emergency has passed, again according to the observatory's study, the 51% of large companies says that it will act on physical spaces, modifying the methods of use to meet the new work needs of its employees.
This means that many companies will have an abundance of potentially unused office space and the solution we have identified is the optimization of these spaces with the opening of Changes coworking partner points.
In practice, companies maintain their identity and structure but, with the support of Changes, they can have operational and strategic benefits. Furthermore. thanks to the supply of highly differentiating tools, they will be able to have interesting margins by generating income spaces that would otherwise remain unused. And this not only in big cities but also in small urban centers which in the future will increasingly need to offer flexible work spaces to those who commute will be less and less.