Places of production, more or less spontaneous and flexible, appropriated by knowledge agents (the example of the coworking spaces)

The knowledge workers have already start to appropriate some urban places to their new practices. We can take the example of the cafes or the lobby of the hotels get transformed into a meeting room for a while. Then, with the development of wifi in the cafes or public spaces, it is more and more possible to appropriate a place and work there temporarily. Then private initiatives create places like co working spaces or hackerspace. Their goal is to animate and nurture collaborations in a network of entrepreneurs, freelancers, artists… through a structure like an association. Those spaces are often located in the city

center owing to their needs to federate a lot of people in a place where all the amenities could be found. Today, the principles of coworking space are used by big companies like Regus or Spaces which propose several solution of office renting or access to a working space. But we can wonder the role of such very profitable structures who attracts a lot of people and their real impacts in terms of collaboration. Indeed, innovation needs a turnover of people and ideas but also trustworthy relationships which is easier if the turnover is not so important. Then, some of these structures don’t have the goal to animate the network through special events or partnerships with other structures in the same city or abroad.

3.1. The Ecosystem of startups in Shanghai: a well organised network

The Shanghainese ecosystem is much more organized than the ecosystem in Beijing and brings together all the startups in Shanghai who do not participate in the ecosystem of public science parks. Three organizations are at the origin of this structure: two coworking spaces (Xin Dan Wei and People Squared) and an association of volunteers (Techyizu). These three structures are very closed and are willing to share information and organize joint events. They are also characterized by their international openness. The founder of Xin Dan Wei, was educated in the Netherlands and participate in international events related to coworking spaces. Xin Dan Wei also home to many foreign entrepreneurs coming to develop their project in Shanghai. It also deals with Barcelona Activa, organized missions for the design team of Renault and receives regularly Google teams. The co-founder of People Squared studied in Canada and among the volunteers Techyizu, many expatriates and returnees. This reflects the international character of Shanghai that is more open at than Beijing.

Finally, the ecosystem unites and promotes complementarities between ICT, art, design, communication, marketing fields... Moreover, the role of the players in the ecosystem is twofold: creating events to promote debate and the exchange of ideas and managing a community. Xin Dan Wei has launched such a service platform on which a member can post a question or a problem he faces in the hope that another member can provide a solution.

3.2. The ecosystem of startups Beijing: a bicephalous organization

Unlike Shanghai, where there is a well-structured network thanks to associations and coworking spaces, two separate networks have developed in Beijing. The first is located in the district of Zhongguancun and the second in the Chaoyang District. Zhongguancun area was developed in the 1980s in the northwest of Beijing. The central government has launched projects to promote the creation of startups and encourage government research institutes to set up businesses. This area grew rapidly and became very attractive for Chinese entrepreneurs so that it is nicknamed the “Silicon Valley of China”. While public and political authorities are very present in the development of Zhongguancun, there are some private organizations whose purpose is to help entrepreneurs. We can cite as an example of private support structures for entrepreneurship the co-working spaces 3W Café, Coffee Garage or Innovation Works. This last one is a business incubator that invests in projects and provides support and advice needed to project. It was created by Lee Kaifu, a well-known personality in China (he has launched Google in the Chinese market) despite its methods and practices often criticized (charge of copycat and important control over the projects). These structures were able to develop and attract Chinese entrepreneurs because of the excessive rents in Zhongguancun, well beyond the means of startups. These coworking spaces therefore offer an attractive alternative to work in the “chinese Silicon Valley”.

However Zhongguancun copes with the competition from Chaoyang district is attractive for foreign startups. In fact, they prefer to settle in the Chaoyang District rather than in the Zhongguancun area for several reasons:

• proximity to the center and the headquarters of multinationals; • cheaper rents;

• more open to the international community. The people met in Chaoyang believes that Zhongguancun is a closed environment and a marketing operation;

• startups are unattractive in Zhongguancun regarding their products, services and business plan (according to entrepreneurs in Chaoyang).

Regardless, Chaoyang develops its own organizations and its own events related to startups and ICT sector.

3.3. Places and networks develop in the fringe of public policies and initiatives of major players of innovation

We are witnessing the emergence of spontaneous networks in the fringe of government policies and initiatives of major players in the innovation (universities, corporations, laboratories ...). They usually unite around one or two structures are responsible for managing a network. They therefore participate very actively in the local buzz and assimilation of information. These networks create new dedicated spaces to the exchange and the innovation like coworking spaces or appropriate existing places such as cafes or restaurants in a temporarily and where they organize unifying events. These new or reappropriated spaces are thus characterized by their openness and flexibility of use. In addition, these different places work perfectly if a sufficient public transport service allows temporal proximity so that the network can be extended at the scale of the city and not of a neighborhood.

We also observe an emancipation from the innovative places and a restructuring of the innovation process. We can take the example of incubation and creation of startups. The classical approach is based on proposing in a building all the services an entrepreneur needs. But we can notice now that more and more entrepreneurs are mobile: they have an idea of startup when they were at university, they rent an access in a coworking space, participate to events about create business or innovation in other places, have meetings in bars or restaurant… so that maybe we should consider the incubation process not at a building scale (a simple incubator) but at the city scale.

Given these spontaneous networks that are formed primarily in metropolis, the problems for the actors of the city is what policy could be adopted to encourage without freezing these dynamics and whether we have to include them in most ambitious economic development projects. One answer we can give is to not only create places dedicated to innovation and trying to force cooperation, but also to foster the emergence of places of opportunities for innovation and cooperation. Indeed it appears that these networks, even if they are based on physical space, rather create situations of innovation and cooperation than places of innovation and cooperation, physical space and proximity being only tools.