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?

Characteristics of Creative Community Spaces

2.3 Impact

The CCSs featured here broadly fall into one of two categories: general or thematic. Creative spaces in the general category welcome start-ups with a diversity of objectives and across sectors; the spaces in the thematic category tend to focus on specifically unifying start-ups within a combined space and lending industry-specific services. This report aims to present a balanced selection of spaces, though there are more general spaces featured.

The majority of these featured spaces fall under more than one impact category (see Exhibit 2.1 for definitions of the four categories). Typically, each space combines two or three impact categories. The most common category is entrepreneurial communities building, followed by business acceleration and urban regeneration, with industry innovation the rarest impact category represented in this study.

Exhibit 2.1. Impact Categories

Entrepreneurial Communities Building	This impact category is characterized by the space contributing to catalyzing the entrepreneurial community where there was none or where the existing community was weak. Spaces that have this type of impact provide access to tools, knowledge, and the best talent of a broader population, thus giving entrepreneurs and corporations an opportunity to benefit from collaborative innovation programs and innovative tools, as well as connecting people, ideas, and resources to actualize ideas across industries. Many of the spaces use membership structure as a means of building a sense of community and accountability. These spaces are proactive in using various educational platforms to ensure the quality of the talent and to attract more attention from the private sector. Workshops, courses, office hours with industry leaders, and competitive initial selection are some of the attributes of the spaces put in this category. Spaces that have this impact often also offer elaborate training programs for the private sector, aiming to enrich the community by bringing in different business perspectives. Many of the spaces included in this category might be characterized as the pioneers of the innovative spaces field: Whether they are well-established centers of ecosystems in European cities or recently launched trailblazers all around the world, they showcase the business models, the tools, and the strategies that help make the first step in building entrepreneurial communities.
Urban Regeneration	The majority of featured spaces that have had an impact on urban regeneration have started by cataCCSs with this impact category are best characterized by their contribution to revitalizing areas through their presence. lyzing ecosystems in the city, thus serving as triggers for a neighborhood's transformation. In other cases, the spaces were launched with a goal to start this urban revitalization. A neighborhood's transformation might take form by the space kick-starting the commercial activities and creating new work opportunities in an area that otherwise was lacking it; it also might include the development of new or the expansion of existing high-quality business infrastructure to support local talent. Put on a municipality's map by the evidence of a growing community and positive changes in a neighborhood's demographics, these spaces often get the support of the city government, whether in the form of subsidies or public-private partnerships.
Industry Innovation	This impact category includes spaces that have an industry focus and demonstrate new ways to innovate within that industry. The creative spaces within the industry innovation category optimize the costs of doing business in a specific industry by providing entrepreneurs with access to the tools, space, and human capital (coaching sessions, workshops, consulting) otherwise too expensive for an individual start-up. The spaces often complement industry-specific services with general training. The focus of training varies from digital literacy to graphic design. Some of the spaces in this study have successfully capitalized on regional- or city-level advantages by tapping into their area's leading industries. This category tends to emerge in areas with well-developed and distinct ecosystems with multiple stakeholders. The spaces featured under this category usually have strong connections with the private sector and academic institutions, which lead to strengthening intra-industry collaborations and reveal a potential for highly targeted disruption.
Business Acceleration	Creative spaces that fall into the business accelerator category compress the timescale for starting up a new business by operating as a type of bootcamp and a "one-stop shop" for a specific type of business. These spaces reduce the time needed for a company to launch, lower the barriers to entry, and accelerate growth for businesses by providing entrepreneurs with tailored consulting services and educational programs; they also create strategic shortcuts for the general entrepreneurial community. The latter solution is easier to achieve for spaces that work with accelerating business in a specific industry. One important characteristic of the spaces with this impact is their focus on helping entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. In this scenario, educational programs and consulting services tend to be complemented with connection to funding and an extensive network of investors. This category of spaces rarely has a range of public partners; in some instances, they are affiliated with academic institutions; and in either case, they are well connected with the business communities.

The general and thematic spaces are impactful in different categories. The general spaces have more impact on entrepreneurial communities building and urban regeneration, while the thematic spaces contribute to business acceleration and industry innovation (Matrix 2.1).

Matrix 2.1. Scope-by-Impact Matrix

In almost three-quarters of the cases, the creative spaces that contribute to urban regeneration also contribute to entrepreneurial communities building, while only a quarter of the spaces that contribute to industry innovation also have an impact on entrepreneurial communities. This implies a connection between developing entrepreneurial communities and urban cohesion in line with experience shown in New York, Barcelona, Nairobi, Berlin, and Paris. The lesser impact of industry innovation-focused spaces on entrepreneurial communities may be because of the industry focus and the acceleration of thematically focused start-ups rather than on generic community building.

This suggests that there are two groups of impact areas:

entrepreneurial community building and urban regeneration, and
industry innovation, with the later focused on creation and absorption of innovation by the local industry.

The creative spaces mix models and impact focus depending on their local environment and objective (Matrix 2.1). This suggests that CCSs are a flexible tool that can be adapted to local circumstances as needed to address the desired impact among the categories identified.

Box 2.1. How CCS Are Transforming and Revitalizing Neighborhoods in Practice

Creative community spaces have a diverse impact on neighborhoods, resulting in urban regeneration through the repurposing of abandoned buildings, the development of new economic activities, and the strengthening of social cohesion. Here are some examples of where and how CCSs have impacted urban regeneration.

Both the Factory in Berlin and iF in Santiago revitalized their neighborhoods by repurposing old industrial buildings and creating a new entrepreneurial community in previously economically depressed areas. The Factory was a catalyst for the regeneration of the Mitte district - the central district of former East Berlin where the wall was once placed - and its conversion into the heart of Berlin's start-up ecosystem. The Factory repurposed an old factory (the Oswald Brauerei), revitalizing the area by attracting and creating a community of entrepreneurs through events, coworking space, and an accelerator. Similarly, iF refurbished an old hat factory and created (starting with a grassroots maker space) a community of entrepreneurs and business links that revitalized Santiago's Barrio Italia and attracted more innovation and creative stakeholders to the area, including a fab lab. Both Mitte and Barrio Italia had a base of creative communities that these two spaces leveraged in attracting and developing their entrepreneurial communities. iHub in Nairobi had a similar effect in the Bishop Magua Center, revitalizing the neighborhood and transforming it into the epicenter of tech community in the city. Interestingly, these three CCSs are private-led initiatives.

Fab Lab Lisbon and Promálaga Urban Incubators, on the other hand, were specifically created by their city governments to revitalize the social fabric and economy of specific neighborhoods. Fab Lab Lisbon refurbished the abandoned slaughterhouse of a municipal market in a decaying inner-city neighborhood that is home to a large number of old-aged and low-income migrant people. Fab Lab Lisbon initially focused on revitalizing the occupations of the neighborhood population, most of which are related to arts and crafts. By providing training on digital fabrication and building a community of creative artisans and entrepreneurs, Fab Lab Lisbon expanded the opportunities of the neighborhood population. Moreover, Fab Lab Lisbon resulted in a new hub of innovation, attracting a creative community to a previously decaying neighborhood. Promálaga Urban Incubators, in contrast, is designed for newly created neighborhoods, where the social and economic fabric does not exist yet. By accelerating the deployment and operation of basic neighborhood retail businesses, Promálaga Urban Incubators rapidly create anchors for local social activity, connecting the population to the neighborhood through active street life. This results in a higher social cohesion and local economic activity than would otherwise naturally occur.