Building upon the Base of Recommendations
It’s no secret that the world’s most trusted buying and selling platforms integrate recommendation and review features to increase satisfaction and viability of business products and services. It’s also no surprise that Community Managers are frequently the trusted face of the coworking company to recommend internal and external vendors or deem product providers as viable. It is therefore good to see that included.co actively works to gain feedback from users not only to expose recommendations to other users, but to help members and vendors to improve their products and services. Similarly, Coliga is creating a localised spin-off platform called Recommend Berlin, based entirely on word-of-mouth recommendations.
Shared Services within the Sharing Economy
The coworking industry itself was born from innovation and the minds behind coworking shared service platforms are no different. Both Jardim and Kolonas are piecing together a much bigger picture behind the scenes as their businesses support the shared economy. Kolonas explained how he believes “entrepreneurship will continue to be a driving force in positive socioeconomic change, as it allows people to create jobs, get out of poverty and support their communities. There is unprecedented value to be unlocked as we move to the next evolution of the sharing economy and enable micro businesses and entrepreneurs, who are not yet supported, to succeed.”
Meanwhile, Jardim is bringing together international forces to improve his existing platforms with a sharp focus on moving away from the linear economy and towards the circular economy. By doing this, Jardim reduces regular waste and re-utilises resources throughout his business models to help decentralised and bottom-up ideas grow. In a recent paper by McKinsey & Co, it was predicted that the “circular economy could generate a net economic gain of €1.8 trillion per year by 2030”.
It may therefore be concluded that platforms supporting the exchange of services between coworking members and the wider ecosystem add significant value to the industry by helping members create more revenue and by helping the industry as a whole become more sustainable. There is no doubt that human curators of communities still have a large part to play as enablers, but they now have the advantage of integrating technology to streamline activity and accelerate the speed at which their communities benefit from shared services.
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Our author Megan Hanney reports on global coworking trends having launched 3 coworking spaces throughout London and Spain. Follow @megan__hanney.
