Creative Community Spaces

Communities of entrepreneurs create positive social, environmental, and economic changes in local communities. Creative community spaces (CCSs), which are physical spaces that encourage innovation by bringing entrepreneurs and start-ups together, are at the center of these changes. This article showcases a selection of 13 CCSs worldwide that contribute to building a sustainable and entrepreneurial community while helping advance industry-specific and sectoral issues. How can creative community spaces support sustainable innovation from the root level? What are some best practices in creating entrepreneurial ecosystems that lead to sustainable innovation and local impact?

Glossary

  • Accelerator: A space that provides later-stage start-ups with access to mentorship and a larger network to further develop their business ideas over an intensive and limited time frame of a few weeks to months. Often, the start-ups give equity in return for mentorship and small seed investment. 
  • Angel investor: A person who supplies starting or growth capital for seed-stage and early stage companies in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity.
  • Bootcamp: An immersive and technical training program focused on up-to-date trends in technology, entrepreneurship, coding and design, and professional skills development.
  • Community space: A space that is designed to be inclusive of all members of a community, often providing learning activities and a space to recreate and exchange ideas.
  • Coworking space: A membership-based work space that allows diverse groups of independent creative professionals and individuals that work remotely to work in a shared setting. Coworking spaces aim to help those with common values develop potential synergies.
  • Incubator: A space designed for early stage start-ups that provides a shared space as well as access to mentors and a variety of services (for example, business literacy programs, market research, marketing assistance, business coaching, and so on). 
  • Innovation hub: A space that has community managers that integrate many of the other functions of creative community spaces. Innovation hubs' main function is to coordinate all actors of the ecosystem and help manage the community of tech-innovators and entrepreneurs to grow sustainably. Many of these innovation hubs enjoy the participation of the most relevant actors of the technology innovation ecosystem, including entrepreneurs, universities, private sector, creative community spaces, and government - particularly city government. 
  • Fab lab: A space that specializes in digital fabrication (a type of manufacturing that uses computer-controlled machines), which includes a range of additive manufacturing technologies, with 3-D printing being the most common.
  • Hacker space: A space that is operated by a community of like-minded individuals, often with a strong interest in technology, science, and digital fabrication, with an aim to provide a ground for collaboration and socialization for the members of the community.
  • Hub: An effective focal point and generator of activity for a given sector. It applies to spaces, regions, and networks.
  • Maker space: A space for creative production in art, science, and engineering where people of all ages and career paths integrate digital and physical technologies to learn technical skills and create new products.
  • Venture capital: Capital that is provided to seed-stage and early stage companies by professional investors if these companies are seen as potential high-growth ventures.