The Co-Working as a Social Innovation. A Qualitative Study of the Reasons for Creating Co-Working Spaces

Abstract

Coworking is an emerging social innovation within the collaborative economy context. It is a response of the creative classes to the situation of precarious work and the transformations in the forms of work, as well as by the entrepreneurs. Its expansion and development are fundamentally limited to the last decade, being the case of an innovation still in a situation of interpretative flexibility. Through a qualitative research applied to the coworking spaces in the city of Alicante (Valencian Community, Spain), we can deepen and develop these issues through empirical data, detecting two different development dynamics in the spaces according to the professional profile of its promoters, configuring different coworking spaces in based on the motivations.