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UNIVERSITY COWORKING SPACE AS A
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING SPACE
Rizal Rickieno
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Philosophy
School of Economics and Finance
QUT Business School
Queensland University of Technology
2020
University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space i
ABSTRACT
In the new economics, people share in utilising resources and services digitally.
This sharing economy has been emerging to support the growing need of entrepreneurs
and start-up companies to utilise coworking spaces. Coworking space is generally
understood as a shared workspace that provides a flexible physical work environment
where people are able to collaborate and foster entrepreneurship. Coworking spaces in
universities have become popular on campuses to promote entrepreneurship for
student, alumni and staff. The QUT Foundry coworking space, which is QUT’s hub
for entrepreneurship activities, is taken as a case study. It is still unclear how university
coworking spaces can further this promotion, extending into support entrepreneurship
and collaboration for student, alumni and staff.
The purpose of this research is to understand the role of university coworking
space, to question how this coworking space can facilitate entrepreneurship and
collaborative learning for student, alumni and staff. This research addresses a gap in
understanding the relationship of how the supportive elements connect to each other,
to facilitate entrepreneurial activities and collaborative learning.
The research uses an explorative qualitative method, including semi-structured
interviews of five Foundry members and three key stakeholders of QUT Foundry
coworking spaces. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the eight interview
participants. The findings indicate that combining the role of place, people and system
can provide greater opportunities to generate the creativity and innovation within
university coworking spaces. The condition applies that all elements in an ecosystem
live in balance to become sustainable. Applying a collaborative learning approach in
coworking has been found to have benefits in supporting community engagement that
promotes collaboration between interdisciplinary skills, improves social interaction
and managerial skills. The collaborative culture among members itself occurs
organically, but it is distracted as a result of communication and social interaction
among members.
ii University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space
This study contributes to the emerging literature on university coworking spaces
by providing a detailed understanding of collaborative learning and entrepreneurial
practices in QUT. Ultimately, the research provides future directions for research, in
order to inform recommendations about the potential role for universities and
stakeholders in the coworking space industry.
Key words: university coworking space, collaborative learning, start-up,
entrepreneurship.
University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space iii
GLOSSARY
Accelerator: [organisation that] “aims to accelerate new venture creation by providing
education and mentoring to cohorts of ventures during a limited time” (Pauwels,
Clarysse, Wright, & Van Hove, 2016, p. 2)
Co-creation: “a cooperative process involving interactions between customers and
organisations in all creative activities” (Romero & Molina, 2011, p. 3)
Collaboration: “a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle where individuals
are responsible for their actions, including learning and respect the abilities and
contributions of their peers” (M. Laal, 2013a, p. 1)
Collaborative Learning: [a] “method in which individuals work with one another to
achieve a common goal. They are responsible for their learning as well as the learning
of others, and the success of one promotes others to be successful” (M. Laal, 2013b,
p. 2)
Community Engagement: “a systematic relationship between Higher Education
[institutions] and [their] environment [communities] that is characterised by mutually
beneficial interaction in the sense that it enriches learning, teaching and research and
simultaneously addresses societal problems, issues and challenges” (Centre for Higher
Education Transformation [CHET, 2003: 4] in Mtawa, Fongwa, & Wangenge-Ouma,
2016, p. 1)
Incubator: “programs that nurture the development of entrepreneurial companies,
helping them survive and grow during the start-up period, when they are most
vulnerable” (NBIA, 2013 in Essig, 2014, p. 170)
Start-up company: “beginner companies that enter the market with limited resources
and little business experience” (Skala, 2019, p. 41).
iv University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... i
Glossary ................................................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... iv
List of Figures and Tables ....................................................................................................... vi
Statement of Original Authorship .......................................................................................... vii
Publication ............................................................................................................................. viii
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. ix
Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background .................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Research Objectives and Questions ............................................................................... 7
1.3 Significance of the Study ............................................................................................... 8
1.4 Thesis Outline ................................................................................................................ 9
1.5 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 10
Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................... 11
2.1 Coworking Space: An Evolution and Dynamic of the Concept ................................... 11
2.2 Entrepreneurship in University .................................................................................... 18
2.3 Collaborative Learning in University CWS ................................................................. 22
2.4 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 3: Research Design .............................................................................. 27
3.1 Methodology and Research Design ............................................................................. 27
3.2 Data Collection Methods ............................................................................................. 30
3.3 Ethical Consideration ................................................................................................... 31
3.4 Data Analysis Method .................................................................................................. 32
3.5 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 33
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions .................................................................. 35
4.1 Intersection of Place, People and System .................................................................... 38
4.2 Coworking as Collaborative Learning Space ............................................................... 47
4.3 Entrepreneurial Journey ............................................................................................... 50
4.4 Supportive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem ........................................................................ 57
4.5 Users’ Challenge .......................................................................................................... 58
4.6 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 60
Chapter 5: Conclusion ....................................................................................... 63
5.1 Response to Research Questions .................................................................................. 63
5.2 Practical Implications ................................................................................................... 66
University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space v
5.3 Limitations ....................................................................................................................66
5.4 Future Studies ...............................................................................................................67
5.5 Summary .......................................................................................................................68
References ................................................................................................................. 69
Appendices ................................................................................................................ 77
Appendix A Interview Questions for The Foundry Members ................................................77
Appendix B Ethic form for Semi-Structure Interviews .........................................................79
vi University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 3.1 Diagram of Research Design .................................................................... 29
Figure 4.1 Initial Thematic Map, showing five main themes .................................... 36
Figure 4.2 Developed Thematic Maps, showing four main themes ........................... 37
Figure 4.3 Final thematic map, showing final four main themes: Place, People,
System, and Collaborative Learning ............................................................ 38
Figure 4.4 Intersection of Place, People and System ................................................. 39
Figure 4.5 Foundry in QUT Entrepreneurial Ecosystem ........................................... 45
Figure 4.6 Diagram of Members’ Entrepreneurial Journey ....................................... 50
Figure 4.7 FM1 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................... 51
Figure 4.8 FM2 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................... 53
Figure 4.9 FM3 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................... 54
Figure 4.10 FM4 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................. 55
Figure 4.11 FM5 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................. 56
Figure 4.12 FM5 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................. 56
Table 2.1 Definitions of coworking space among scholars ....................................... 13
Table 3.1 List of Documents and the Information on Data Analysis Documents ..... 28
Table 4.1 Participants of this study ............................................................................ 35
Table 4.2 Initial coding .............................................................................................. 36
STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet
requirements for an award at thjs or any other higher education institution. To the best
of my knowledge and belief: the thesis contains no material previously published or
written by another person except where due reference is made.
QUT Verified Signature Signature:
Date: 06 I 08 / 2020
University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Leaming Space Vil
viii University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space
PUBLICATION
Rickieno, R., Susilawati, C., & Guaralda, M. (2020). University co-working space
facilitate collaboration in the entrepreneurship journey: Users’ experiences. In
BEST 2020 Conference on Human Behaviour & Decision Making. 13-14
February 2020, Brisbane.
University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Alhamdulillah, I am extremely grateful to be able to finish my MPhil. Praise to
Allah, the Merciful, for giving me blessings, the strength and courage to bring to the
end, the interesting journey of my study. First and foremost, I would like to thank the
Queensland University of Technology for giving me QUT Higher Degree Research
Students Tuition Fee Scholarship, as well as Universitas Nasional Pasim in Bandung,
Indonesia, for providing me living allowance during my study. Without the
sponsorship, it will be hard for me to pursue my study, especially here in Brisbane,
Australia.
I also would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Connie
Susilawati and Dr. Mirko Guaralda, who have supported and advised me along this
journey. Without you, this thesis would never been completed, your guidance has been
invaluable. This MPhil also would not have been possible without the corporation and
support extended by all people who have contributed to this research by giving their
inputs and suggestions, and by participating in the interview. Many thanks to all the
participants in this research; thank you so much for sharing your individual
experiences and your precious time. Thank you Sarah, Onur and Ana from Urban
Informatics QUT, who have shared their knowledge during my ethical clearance
process. I acknowledge the services of professional editor, Diane Kolomeitz, who
provided copyediting and proofreading services, according to the guidelines laid out
in the university-endorsed national ‘Guidelines for editing research theses’.
I also would like to express my gratitude for receiving a student exchange
scholarship from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) at Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, from 2 September 2019-2 January 2020.
Prof. Dr. Orestis Terzidis, Head of Entrepreneurship, Technology-Management and
Innovation (EnTechnon), his staff and the friends I have made there, have supported
me on this journey during my four months at KIT and given me insightful inputs to
improve my thesis and opportunities to broaden my network.
Thank you to colleagues and friends from Science and Engineering Faculty
(SEF) and Business School, Group Khataman Brisbane, Malmingan, Sullivan
Nicolaides Pathology, Indonesian Students Association QUT (ISAQ), my Indonesian
x University Coworking Space As A Collaborative Learning Space
friends in University of Queensland and Griffith University, Mas Tauhid Nur Azhar
from RPC-Innovation Centre, Kak Rakhmat Sudrajat, and many more that I could not
mention one by one, for supporting and motivating me.
Finally, I would like to thank my big family who also have fully supported me
on this journey with patience, understanding and love; my thanks go especially to my
son Zaky, and my wonderful wife Alila. I could not have made this journey without
you.
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Introduction
Disruptive technology has changed the way people live, work and conduct their
economic activities. The disruption of Information, Communication and Technology
(ICT) together with global economic changes, have created a demand for flexible
office locations that support mobile and collaborative work. The shift from factory-
based manufacturing to flexible knowledge production and the emergence of wireless
digital technology have given rise to the new economy (Grazian, 2019). The global
trend of a new economy driven by the digitalised economy (Belk, 2014), where people
share underutilised resources in peer-to-peer networks (Bouncken & Reuschl, 2018),
as well as creativity and innovation, tends to be an ultimate human capital (Leclercq-
Vandelannoitte & Isaac, 2016). As a response to the sharing economy and rapid growth
of technology, work style has transformed the working spaces as well as the way
people work and collaborate. Work is no longer a place but an activity, and, while
collaboration between people has always occurred, the interactions with others now
occur as often digitally as they do physically (Füller, Matzler, Müller, Hautz, & Hutter,
2012). Therefore, a new economy can open up opportunity to society in changing the
way people work and collaborate.
Collaboration is a highly valuable competency in knowledge societies that can
generate innovation and creativity (Scott, 2015) and the driving force for most
innovation is developing a successful model for collaborative innovation (White,
2016), by a wide mix of the people participating. This can create a network of
knowledge in an open atmosphere to simplify the creation of new ideas (Schopfel et
al., 2015). In the community, face-to-face collaboration generates a variety of new
opportunities and benefits, which increases trust, commitment, and knowledge sharing
and creative processes (Füller et al., 2012). In the recent year, the concept of sharing
economy and disruptive technology has transformed the way of people working
independently without requiring dedicated workspace; instead, they use it as on-
demand office space.
Today’s society has seen a growth of a more mobile workforce of independents
who, for some time, have been working autonomously from home offices and coffee
2 Chapter 1: Introduction
shops as complimentary or alternative coworking spaces, rather than fixed workspaces.
The coworking space (CWS) is a sample of a growing form of work that allows
members to collaborate with other affiliated members or organisations (Ross & Ressia,
2015), that provides a flexible physical work environment where people are able to
cooperate with each other. Underlying this assumption is the notion that collaborative
environments and social relations are the main factors to foster innovation.
A number of CWSs have emerged rapidly as work places for different sorts of
knowledge sharing, where people conduct entrepreneurial activities. Bouncken &
Reuschl (2018) state that the sharing economy brings CWS forward as a new
phenomenon of working space. The sharing economy is collaborative consumption or
peer-to-peer activity in a perceived value of ownership that can have the benefit of
goods and services only when they are required or desired, without obtaining
ownership (Belk, 2014). In the context of CWS, people can rent workspace for a short-
term period of time without getting ownership. In addition, WatersLynch (2018)
pointed out that the rise of CWS is in line with the rise of self-employed workers,
freelancers and entrepreneurs who need an appropriate workplace. It can be seen that
a CWS is also able to be a sharing social space alongside an office (Bouncken et. al,
2018), where a group of professionals work in shared office space and generate social
interaction, knowledge sharing and idea exchange.
In the last decade, CWSs for students and entrepreneurs have become popular
on university campuses. Universities can take this global trend to establish university
CWS and develop an integrated concept for entrepreneur universities. In the context
of a university, a CWS is a shared workspace that is provided by a university to
facilitate students, staff and alumni conducting entrepreneurial activities, where they
might be primarily interested in knowledge exchange, learning, and innovation to
foster economic growth. Entrepreneurship programs in universities are mostly
founded as spin-offs or start-ups established by those universities (Barth et al., 2017)
and supported by governments directly and indirectly through funding for
infrastructure, training, workshops, and events (Martin, McNally, & Kay, 2013). This
also can allow university CWS members to reap the benefits of accessing various areas
of knowledge to improve entrepreneurship skills.
In this context, the university as an educational institution needs to consider, in
preparing human capital resources to be ready with the growth of technology in the
Chapter 1: Introduction 3
future, to provide university coworking spaces that are expected to be able to facilitate
entrepreneurship programs to boost innovation, economic growth, development and
employment. University coworking space is used to facilitate and foster diverse
backgrounds of collaboration and work together, to create valuable innovation.
At the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), QUT Foundry coworking
space is a hub for an entrepreneurship program and a collaborative workspace. It goes
beyond traditional classroom teaching to experiential learning to facilitate and improve
employment outcomes for students, staff and alumni who want to develop
entrepreneurship or start-ups as their career option. At QUT, entrepreneurship is being
taught and practised, whether for credit or for fun, and becomes a trend and part of
everyday life as a new career destination (QUTbluebox, 2018). In this way, these
initiatives might benefit to universities in supporting community engagement from
interdisciplinary skills, to collaborate by providing entrepreneurship environment.
However, people who are interested in entrepreneurship need to decide how, when,
and where they can initiate a start-up company.
The Foundry is part of the QUT entrepreneurial ecosystem to provide
entrepreneurship environments for collaboration, social relations and learning
communities that can be the main factors in fostering new ideas and innovation to
support entrepreneurial activities in CWS. Wright et. al., (2017) pointed out that the
entrepreneurial environment includes a university ecosystem to facilitate student
entrepreneurship, which has important implications for universities in developing
university entrepreneurship. In addition, CWS in universities can give rise to social
interactions and knowledge and idea exchanges, which not only provide a sharing of
working-spaces, but also entrepreneurship (Bouncken & Reuschl, 2018) and
alternative career opportunities for students. This becomes an avenue for more
meaningful engagement with industry, as well as access to mentoring, seed capital and
the collaboration of lasting research partnerships (Mahlberg & Riemer, 2017).
Through this avenue, students can gain work experience through involvement with
industry sectors, contribute to economic and technological development and bridge the
gap between academia and industries.
The purpose of this study is to understand the role of collaborative learning in
university coworking space as the potential emergence of entrepreneurship in an
academic environment. This chapter will outline key sections of the study. Section 1.1
4 Chapter 1: Introduction
frames the study by providing a background of entrepreneurship activities through
collaborative learning in universities. Section 1.2 discusses the research objectives and
questions of this study. Finally, section 1.3 includes an outline of the remaining
chapters of the thesis.
1.1 Background
Start-ups may be small companies but they can play a significant contribution in
economic growth. In the 21st century, most of the successful companies that contribute
to economic growth started their business as entrepreneurs and start-ups, such as eBay,
Facebook, Uber, PayPal, Twitter, Amazon, and many more. Professor Arun Sharma
points out the fact that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumni have
produced 25,800 companies that have generated 3.3 million jobs and $2 trillion in
annual revenue (QUTbluebox, 2018). QUT has formed a strategic development by
developing QUT Foundry as a university coworking space (CWS) to provide
entrepreneurial environments for collaboration and for learning communities to
support CWS members’ entrepreneurial activities. In Australia, the start-up sector has
the potential to contribute $109 billion or 4% of GDP to the Australian economy and
540,000 jobs by 2033 with a concerted effort from entrepreneurs, educators, the
government and corporate Australia (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2013).
QUT seeks to have a similar impact on the Australian and global economy by
supporting researchers in their efforts to add entrepreneurship to their suite of skills
(QUTbluebox, 2018). In this way, QUT has facilitated these efforts by providing the
appropriate framework and entrepreneurial ecosystem, where students, staff and
alumni can go to obtain assistance and ascertain perspectives on what they can do to
start developing as entrepreneurs and start-up ventures.
QUT Foundry is actively involved in supporting and promoting entrepreneurship
as a home for students, staff and alumni to develop entrepreneurship and innovation to
grow on campus. QUT Foundry is described as a space to devise and develop ideas
that offers a twenty-four hour a day work space designed to create new ventures and
opportunities for collaboration, for QUT students, staff and alumni. Entrepreneurial
activity is embedded with collaboration, engagement and interaction among CWS
members in an innovation and entrepreneurship environment that makes members
learn by real-life doing, co-creating and using opportunities to sharing knowledge and
Chapter 1: Introduction 5
experience in multiple ways (Oganisjana, 2015). Therefore, collaboration can afford
an opportunity for members to synergise activities in line with the learning of
entrepreneurship, which is supposed will keep working among these members and
others from interdisciplinary areas.
Launched in October 2016, the Foundry is situated at D and P block at Gardens
Point campus to provide spaces for entrepreneurship activity for students, staff and
alumni to explore their competencies, knowledge, skills, creativity and ideas to
develop innovation and ensure that entrepreneurship happens. QUT has more than one
campus and QUT Gardens Point campus is situated in Brisbane's city centre, beside
the Brisbane River and adjacent to the City Botanic Gardens and Queensland
Parliament House. Located just ten minutes’ walk from QUT ferry terminal and bus
stop, QUT Foundry in D and P blocks provides a simple and easy-going university
coworking space.
In 2019, the Foundry moved to B block at QUT Gardens Point campus and
expanded to the Precinct in Fortitude Valley to provide the QUT community more
convenient access for an entrepreneurial experience, for growing adaptive and
potential opportunity. However, when this researcher started conducting this project
in 2018, the spaces were still located in D and P blocks at Gardens Point campus and
the data collections were at convenient spaces in D and P blocks as well, to give the
participants easier access and a more comfortable and conducive atmosphere when
conducting the interviews.
The development of entrepreneurial ecosystems through research and education
to improve a skilled human capital, contributes significantly to universities’
entrepreneurial programs (Lahikainen, Kolhinen, Ruskovaara, & Pihkala, 2019).
Coworking space is expected to attract people to become involved in the
entrepreneurial ecosystem’s process through entrepreneurial programs and events or
extracurricular activities. The emergence of a university coworking space has
influenced some universities to develop coworking spaces on campus to promote
entrepreneurship and start-ups as new career destinations for students, staff and
alumni. According to Lumley (2014), coworking space in universities could help
students and their community to understand certain entrepreneurial and start-up
phenomena and create more, or better, entrepreneurs. In order to this, Wright et al.,
(2017) argue that universities need to have a strong concept and framework in
6 Chapter 1: Introduction
developing coworking space to understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem required to
enable the community to launch established start-ups.
Additionally, Bouncken (2018) points out that a clear mechanism for university
coworking spaces will offer great potential places to support entrepreneurial activities
on campus. Thus, the university coworking space is one of the university
entrepreneurial programs to support those who want to be an entrepreneur, or to
instigate well-developed start-ups. Therefore, this research intends to explore the
significant factors of university coworking spaces that facilitate the entrepreneurial
activities at QUT. This research will investigate the QUT Foundry ecosystem to
understand the role a university can have in fostering start-ups and entrepreneurship.
Bouncken (2018) stated that a clear mechanism of university coworking would
provide several advantages for how university coworking can integrate their
entrepreneurship program with additional services and the fostering of collaboration
among students from different faculties. The role of CWS can also give a sense of
social responsibility relating to students’ employability and to the transfer of
technology (Schopfel et. al. 2015). In terms of the physical place, university CWSs
also can be situated by utilising idle space in part of campus buildings, such as in the
library, which can provide the economic value of coworking in the library (Lumley,
2014). It can be seen that the disciplines and areas of study that circulate around the
creation of entrepreneurship environments in a university are incredibly complex, and
this study is just one step towards filling the gap to understand the role of collaborative
learning that leads to entrepreneurial activities in the QUT Foundry CWS.
In response to previous studies, this research will explore the role of university
CWSs in facilitating start-ups and entrepreneurial activities that may help members
accordingly address some of the early challenges faced by new ventures within a
supportive entrepreneurship environment. The environment in CWS might provide
social interactions in the social space particularly amongst members who have
similarity, such as being from the same school or faculty, or undertaking similar targets
or projects. Communicating and student grouping from different faculties might
develop patterns or decision rules about the selection of interaction partners
(Bouncken, 2018). As a result, through continuous interaction, the entrepreneurial
environment in CWS leads up to generating social interaction and collaboration that
will shape entrepreneurship and start-up. In this research, collaboration is not only seen
Chapter 1: Introduction 7
as a relationship that occurs among coworkers, but also what members can learn from
that collaboration. Thus, the emphasis on collaborative learning in this research is to
see the potential of collaboration that members can engage in along the way in their
entrepreneurial journey.
This research will discuss the entrepreneurial trend related to the QUT
entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports the QUT Foundry CWS in promoting
entrepreneurship for students, staff and alumni and creating an entrepreneurship
environment where people can collaborate. This research project therefore focuses on
understanding the collaborative learning aspects and entrepreneurial activities of the
members of the QUT Foundry CWS.
Overall, the context of this research is the current phenomenon of a university’s
students doing entrepreneurship activities through coworking space that is provided
by QUT. Using a qualitative research approach, there are three areas that will be
explored in this study. First, this study discusses the role of CWS in a university in
promoting and facilitating entrepreneurship among students, staff and alumni. Second,
this study explores the role of collaborative learning among QUT Foundry members,
to become entrepreneurs. Finally, this study explores the entrepreneurial journey of
members in the Foundry.
1.2 Research Objectives and Questions
This study aims to explore the role of university coworking space in promoting
entrepreneurship and collaborative learning activities among members. The research
question to reach this aim is as follows: How can university coworking spaces be
used to facilitate collaborative learning as well as entrepreneurship activities?
The objectives of this research are to explore university coworking space,
collaborative learning at the Foundry and the benefits and challenges of collaborative
learning for entrepreneurship at the Foundry. The main research question is then
broken down into three sub-research questions:
1. What is the role of university coworking space?
2. What is the role of collaborative learning at the Foundry coworking space?
3. What are the benefits and challenges of collaborative learning for
entrepreneurship at the Foundry?
8 Chapter 1: Introduction
This study explores the concept of collaborative learning in University CWSs to
see the opportunities for members to become entrepreneurs. The user experience in
this study refers to the behaviours of members about using the service or system (Law,
Roto, Hassenzahl, Vermeeren, & Kort, 2009) to understand members’ entrepreneurial
journey through the collaborative learning activities enabling knowledge sharing and
social interaction in the CWS environment.
This research applies a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured
interviews with QUT Foundry members to understand how the programs and
environment support the member to become an entrepreneur. Through this method,
the researcher can achieve an understanding of university coworking space by
describing the role of university entrepreneurial ecosystem. In addition, this method
can provide a detailed understanding of the explored issue. This study involves
interviews with members to explore the process of becoming an entrepreneur using the
QUT Foundry services. An in-depth analysis of the systems used in CWS will reveal
the most efficient tools to unleash the potential of entrepreneurship.
1.3 Significance of the Study
This study will contribute significantly to understand the role of coworking
spaces within universities in supporting entrepreneurship on the campus and to explore
what coworking space means to the people and their community and reveal the benefits
that can be obtained by CWS members in doing collaboration.
Previous studies have described the aspects of coworking through its
characteristics, working environment and activities, and so on. This study provides
new perspective of coworking space through exploring collaborative learning and
experience of coworkers in utilising coworking space. However, little attention has
been paid to what extent coworkers can learn something in the coworking as a
collaborative learning space. Data given will provide the university with information
on CWS member experience of utilising the space and collaborating for
entrepreneurial activities, by examining the environment that contributes to increase
efficiency in social interaction by collaboration with the various skillsets of members.
As a result, this can fill the skills gap of members and increase their confidence in
doing entrepreneurship.
Chapter 1: Introduction 9
In addition, this study may inform the university about the system and
infrastructures that need to be improved upon to support entrepreneurial activities.
Data gathered will suggest that the university and stakeholders make the connection
among entities stronger in order maintaining the advancement of entrepreneurship at
QUT. The entrepreneurial journey of members in this study will also provide
information on a significant part of their journey that influences their entrepreneurial
activities and how the university entrepreneurial environment supports their journey.
When an ecosystem is healthy, it becomes sustainable, meaning all elements live in
balance and are able to procreate. Taking this analogy, to create an entrepreneurial
ecosystem, QUT and all elements need to balance all necessary elements of the
entrepreneurial system.
Collaborative learning in this research will reveal the collaborative process of
coworkers that potentially gives a strong effect to entrepreneurship that is heavily
shaped by the supportive environment and direct social interaction. This study will
show the hidden benefits and potential learning gained from collaboration in CWS that
allows the stakeholders or QUT staff to consider the needs and contributions of any
person regardless of their discipline, ideas, experience, knowledge, or background, to
promote the sharing of knowledge.
Data gathered will also help the students to improve both academic and
entrepreneurship performance. This study will inform the design and development of
university CWS that will support collaborative learning and entrepreneurial activities
among individuals and collaborative groups.
1.4 Thesis Outline
This thesis is organised into five chapters. Chapter One introduces the
background of entrepreneurial university through university CWSs in supporting
entrepreneurial activities in an academic environment, followed by the concept of
collaborative learning in university CWSs. Chapter Two discusses the relevant
literature in the field, beginning with an explanation of the general concept of
entrepreneurship in university CWSs and collaborative learning concepts that frame
this study. Chapter Three summarises the methodological issues of the study
execution, and describes the qualitative methods used in the literature review, in-depth
interviews, data collection and ethical clearance. Chapter Four describes results and
10 Chapter 1: Introduction
discussions of the findings. Finally, Chapter Five presents the conclusion of the work
by providing the practical implication, limitations and future studies of the study.
1.5 Summary
In the recent years, people work and collaborate remotely and more flexible
through utilising coworking spaces. The sharing economy and the rapid growth of
technology have transformed the working space as well the way people work and
collaborate. Coworking space is a shared workspace that provides a flexible work and
collaborative environments that allows its members to collaborate each other. This new
phenomenon of working space is believed in generating social interaction, knowledge
sharing and idea exchange as the main factors to foster innovation.
As a flexible workspace, coworking can be located anywhere, such as in the rural
area, garage, café, city, library, and so on, including in university campus. University
as an educational institution to prepare human capital resources can take part of this
working space as a hub for entrepreneurship program and a collaborative space to
develop entrepreneurship or start-ups as students, alumni or staff career option.
Using qualitative research approach, this research takes QUT Foundry
Coworking Space as a case study to explore the role of university coworking space in
promoting entrepreneurial activities and collaborative learning among its members.
This study will contribute significantly to inform university about the system and
infrastructures that need to be improved upon to support entrepreneurial activities in
the campus and to balance all necessary elements of entrepreneurial system.
Chapter 2: Literature Review 11
Chapter 2: Literature Review
This chapter will describe what has been published on the topic of university
coworking space and identify gaps in the research, positioning my study within the
areas of the role of university coworking space, entrepreneurship and collaborative
learning. First, university coworking space that has the role as entrepreneurship space,
which provides services and infrastructures to promote entrepreneurship for students,
staff and alumni. Second, university entrepreneurship will reveal an ecosystem
including the environment that supports entrepreneurial programs in order to work
smoothly in the university. Third, collaborative learning that will generate social
interaction in the community as part of the entrepreneurial activities of coworkers.
Findings of this study therefore will propose to reveal the connection between those
three elements.
2.1 Coworking Space: An Evolution and Dynamic of the Concept
2.1.1 A Brief History of Coworking Space
In 2005, Brad Neuberg opened the first official coworking space in San
Francisco, Spiral Muse, (Waters-Lynch, Potts, Butcher, Dodson, & Hurley, 2016)
leading to what has become a global phenomenon. Rosencrans (2019) points out that
in 2005 in his personal online blog, Neuberg used the word “coworking” at the first
time to describe his ideas for a new form of office. At the time, he was an independent
worker who liked to work freely and regardless of the restrictions, such as working in
the company office. Unfortunately, that freedom came with some unexpected
weaknesses because he felt lonely and often unproductive. Therefore, he launched his
coworking project by borrowing $300 from his father to rent a space at Spiral Muse
and set up a temporary office using folding tables and chairs. He stated,
“The one thing though was that I would have to set up the space each
of those days and then break everything down as I couldn't leave any
permanent additions. As a side note, I was pretty broke during this
period and it was my dad who actually helped give me the $300 a month
for several months to help pay for the space, which I'm really
appreciative of.” (Neuberg, 2014)
12 Chapter 2: Literature Review
Neuberg posted a story about coworking to his digital blog, inviting others in his
network to join him at this informal shared office. Neuberg’s idea of coworking had a
great response and coworking space becomes a growing office style in the 21st century.
Based on the data collected from 2015 until 2018 (Marchegiani & Arcese, 2017), the
number of coworking spaces around the world has increased by more than double,
from 8900 to 18,900 coworking spaces. The number of members has also improved
significantly from a half million in 2015, to more than triple in 2018.
Bouncken & Reuschl (2018) argue that the trend of a sharing economy has
contributed to an increase of coworking because it is related to the perceived value of
ownership of coworkers, who rent the desks or utilise the services without having
ownership. In this way, it can be described that coworking is a physical configuration
of workspace to fill the needs of entrepreneurs by sharing the desks without obtaining
ownership and the associated obligations. ICT has also contributed to the
transformation of the office workplace and workstyles over the last three decades
moving towards flexibility and mobility (Harris, 2015). Previously, a company was
associated by having a permanent office building or real estate because it was part of
the production process. Today, many companies are selling more creative ideas and
knowledge skills. As a result, workplaces are increasingly designed and managed more
flexibly, and at a higher level, these spaces have “hotel-style” facilities that provide a
high level of service and experience to workers (Harris, 2015). The emergence of ICT
has given increasing worldwide interest to the advanced concept of ubiquitous
computing, mobile devices, cloud computing, web service, social media, and so on,
which has become a part of our daily lives. This obviously impacts the ways that
people play, learn and influence new approaches to the recent work style and
workplace design.
As a result, the growing interest through flexible workplaces has led to the
emergence of a flexible work style called coworking space as a new working model
(Yu, Burke, & Raad, 2019). A growing trend of coworking has become visible and
more popular for coworkers around the world. Some studies pointed out that the
emergence of coworking space was a reaction to the absence of an appropriate
workplace for self-employed workers, freelancers and entrepreneurs who wanted to
avoid the distraction in local coffee bars or the loneliness of working from home (Fuzi,
2015; Waters-Lynch et. al., 2016). Thus, technology has emerged as a new paradigm
Chapter 2: Literature Review 13
in office space, for use and how they work. Today’s society has seen a growth of a
mobile workforce of independents who, for some time, have been working from home
offices and coffee shops with no dedicated workspace. Coworking space appeared as
an alternative workplace model that focused on collaboration and community.
Coworking space as a growing form of work allows members to not only collaborate
face-to-face but also virtually with other affiliated members or organisations (Ross &
Ressia, 2015). Additionally, it provides a flexible physical work environment and a
new set of tools and means by which people are able to collaborate.
Merkel (2015) points out that the ‘co’ in ‘coworking’ refers to an aggregation of
the words, communication, community and collaboration. However, Spinuzzi et al.
(2018) state that there is no strict definition of coworking as seen in table 2.1, thus it
creates various definitions of coworking that will of benefit for the providers to
develop and provide creative coworking space to attract coworkers. Additionally, it
can be an opportunity for researchers to understand the various forms of coworking
spaces that improve collaboration, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation.
Table 2.1 Definitions of coworking space among scholars
Author Methodology Definition of coworking space
(Gandini, 2015, p. 2) Literature Review “Coworking spaces are shared workplaces utilised
by different sorts of knowledge professionals,
mostly freelancers, working in various degrees of
specialisation in the vast domain of the knowledge
industry. Practically conceived as office-renting
facilities where workers hire a desk and a wi-fi
connection these are, more importantly, places
where independent professionals live their daily
routines side-by-side with professional peers,
largely working in the same sector – a
circumstance which has huge implications on the
nature of their job, the relevance of social
relations across their own professional networks
and – ultimately – their existence as productive
workers in the knowledge economy.”
Merkel (2015, p. 2) Observation and
semi structured
interview
“Coworking refers to the practice of working
alongside one another in flexible, shared work
settings where desks can be rented on a daily,
weekly or monthly basis.”
Spinuzzi (2012) Interview and case
study
“Coworking is a low-margin, monthly service
with well-established competitors such as coffee
shops and home offices in addition to other
coworking sites.” (p. 34)
“Coworking is a superclass that encompasses the
good-neighbours and good-partners
14 Chapter 2: Literature Review
configurations as well as other possible
configurations that similarly attempt to network
activities within a given space.” (p. 35)
Bilandzic & Foth
(2013, p. 3)
Observation,
interview and case
study
“A coworking space [is a place] where social
learning emerges as a result of people sharing the
same workspace for their creative activities. It is
conceived as a public community centre for peer
collaboration and creativity around digital culture
and technology, i.e. a place for people to meet,
explore, experience, learn and teach, and share
and discuss topics around creative digital culture
and technology, i.e. a place for people to meet,
explore, experience, learn and teach, and share
and discuss topics around creative practices in
various areas related to digital technology.”
Fuzi (2015, p. 2) Interview and case
study
“Coworking spaces are creative and energetic
places where small firms, freelancers and start-
ups, who have become tired of the isolation of
their home offices and the distractions of their
local coffee shops, can interact, share, build and
co-create.”
2.1.2 Dynamic of Coworking Space
The characteristics of coworking space allow coworkers to be more flexible to
choose teams and work processes, lower administrative duties, grant access to good
locations and social interactions that can provide inspiration, and allow exchanging of
views, learning from others, and forming teams and projects to motivate coworkers
(Bouncken & Reuschl, 2018). In addition, coworking space also offers possible
benefits to the communities in which they exist, where members who come together
to coworking space are enriching their personal social networks, and thus adding
strength to the overall network of social capital in their community (Eaton, 2015).
Therefore, coworking space appeals to the community of entrepreneurs, freelancers,
professionals and others who intend to work in a supportive environment that provides
flexibility, shared work setting, networking and collaboration opportunities amongst
professional and creative people that promote knowledge sharing.
The next question is, what does actually make coworking attractive? Fuzi (2015),
referring to the survey by Deskmag in 2012, reports the most attractive features of
coworking are social interaction (84%), random interaction and opportunities (82%)
and sharing information and knowledge (77%). In line with the survey, Brown (2017)
pointed out that one of the benefits from coworking space is social interaction and that
stimulating collaboration among coworkers contributes in promoting knowledge
Chapter 2: Literature Review 15
sharing. The combination of these benefits may lead to the sense of community
(Spinuzzi et al., 2018) and attract the attention of more people to be coworkers.
At this point, the significance of hosting in coworking space cannot be
overlooked. The coworking host has a significant role to develop the social interaction
where coworking happens. (Merkel, 2015, p. 122) defines that coworking hosts are
“usually the owners or operators or in some cases professional
community managers, who experience, understand and interpret their
work, as well as the social and material practices and strategies they
use to enhance and facilitate interaction, creativity and productivity
among coworkers in a coworking space.”
The role of coworking hosts is discussed as they play a crucial role in stimulating
interaction among coworkers and in building a community around coworking.
Merkel (2015) argues that coworking hosts have a significant role in developing
community engagement, communication and collaboration in coworking. Daily
activities of hosts are facilitating encounters, interaction, collaboration and mutual
trust among coworkers. As a result, coworking not only can develop a new form of
solidarity and collaboration among coworkers but also beyond that, because the hosts
assemble and create relations and community engagement to stimulate new work
experiences amongst coworkers.
In addition, a model of coworking is also influenced by the provider or
ownership. Coworking can be owned by a university, private company, coworking
firm, or public institution. Further, the model of coworking-space, whether open to the
public or particular users only, will depend on the ownership and governance
structures of coworking. At this point, Spinuzzi (2012) identifies three models of
coworking-space based on their ownership: “the community workspace”, “the
federated work space” and “the unoffice” model. Community workspace is defined as
a place to serve local community to work alongside each other. Whereas federated
workspace is designed to foster formal or informal business collaboration and
networking among the coworkers. Finally, the unoffice model of coworking is one
where the essential feature of this coworking is interaction and conversation between
the coworkers to foster collaboration, networking and the sharing of ideas. This
indicates that the location of coworking space also can be situated in a diverse location,
16 Chapter 2: Literature Review
such as in the library, university, café, airport, rural area, and so on, depends on the
proprietor of the coworking space. Furthermore, the model of coworking is also
influencing the users’ preferences, particularly on the goals and motivational factors
of coworkers to work at a coworking space. Weijs-Perrée, van de Koevering, Appel-
Meulenbroek, & Arentze (2019) point out two factors of users’ preferences that play
significant influence when considering a specific coworking space. Firstly, physical
factors such as location, office exterior and division, decoration, facilities and services,
equipment, meeting room, kitchen, and so on. For example, for some people, rental
costs are the most important reason when choosing a coworking, and for others, a
coworking that can provide good equipment and a quiet place is more important.
Secondly, individual characteristics on user preferences, such as age, gender, the
length of time using the coworking, time spent working alone, and so on. For example,
younger coworkers prefer a workplace that encourages teamwork and older coworkers
prefer personal control of the indoor atmosphere. At this point, the user preferences of
coworking space can be considered as preferences for the proprietors of coworking to
provide coworking models according to the market demands.
Despite the benefits and potentials of coworking space, Bouncken et al. (2018)
point out the challenges of entrepreneurship in coworking space, such as the design
office layout that led to the distraction and finding the wrong community or network.
For some reasons, Spinuzzi (2012) also points out that coworkers who are unable to
build trust and relationship with others, they are working alone. In university
environments, the challenges university coworking space are in promoting and guiding
student entrepreneurial activities. Lumley (2014) states that only 40% of her survey
participants have dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur due to entrepreneurship is still
seen as an unsecured and risky job. Therefore, university coworking space not only
needs to promote the entrepreneurial activities, but also to lead the students who want
to be entrepreneur to success and avoid the failure. At this point, Bouncken et al.,
(2018) state that the health management of a coworking space will contribute to create
a positive community to avoid the challenges in the coworking space.
Previous studies have described the aspects of coworking since the beginning by
providing several definitions, potentials, characteristics and benefits. However, little
attention has been paid to the coworking provided by universities, specifically to the
running system that supports university coworking space. By exploring coworking as
Chapter 2: Literature Review 17
part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a university, this study intends to provide an
alternative perspective to see the role of universities in developing university
coworking as a space to foster entrepreneurship on campus and to have a better
understanding on how the system in a university can implement and support
coworking.
2.1.3 University Coworking Space
Today, coworking spaces are becoming increasingly popular in universities.
Recent studies have shown that the purpose of universities providing coworking spaces
are to promote and develop innovative forms of entrepreneurship education (Lumley,
2014) and facilitate alternative career choices for the community (Mahlberg & Riemer,
2017). The flexibility offered by coworking space can provide opportunity for the
people to utilise it for working activities in their flexible time. This practically can give
benefits for students, staff and alumni to use university coworking space as an
alternative work environment equipped with all necessary office amenities (Lumley,
2014). In addition, several programs are offered by university coworking space to
facilitate entrepreneurship such as entrepreneurial events, mentoring, seed funding,
research partnerships and commercialisation (Bouncken, 2018).
Moreover, the integration of existing infrastructure or equipment (e.g. labs, ICT,
3D printing, and so on), stakeholders, academic staff, educated people, networking,
the course structure, and so on, also significantly contributes to promote
entrepreneurial activities with inspirational design, the latest technology and support,
as well as flexible spaces that are designed with the supported entrepreneurial policy
and environment for entrepreneurship and start-ups in university coworking spaces.
This uniqueness of university coworking space shows the difference with other
coworking space that might has limited support and equipment. The availability of
permanent university staff members or experts who are co-locating in the university is
also one of the advantages of university coworking space. They can share knowledge
and experiences to assist in solving various issues or provide ideas that are useful for
members.
In addition, Bouncken (2018, p. 5) points out that
“university coworking space can purposefully assist and advance
entrepreneurship programs, improving venture team formation and
18 Chapter 2: Literature Review
idea and knowledge exchange, providing business development
coaching, training, and linkages to external institutions, specifically to
technology incubators and firms which enrich the business idea.”
In this way, this environment might flourish to promote a new opportunity to improve
entrepreneurship and new venturing in the university by giving access to entrepreneurs
and start-ups with a business idea to further develop their business model. This also
can contribute to the community to engage more meaningfully with industry and
provide them a more structured development experience.
2.2 Entrepreneurship in University
Entrepreneurship and start-up have been a hot topic in recent years. According
to Onuoha (2007 in Tran & Von Korflesch, 2016), entrepreneurship is “the practice of
starting new organisations or revitalising mature organisations, particularly new
businesses, generally in response to identified opportunities. Joseph Schumpeter (1965
in Eroglu & Picak, 2011) defined entrepreneurs as “individuals who exploit market
opportunity through technical and/or organisational innovation”. Moreover, the word
“startup” defines as any form of business in its early stage of development and related
to the spread of ICT (Skala, 2019). The global trend of entrepreneurship was expected,
due to it offering independency, freedom in controlling financial, work, time, location,
and the ability to give good rewards such as earning more income and satisfaction. In
this case, the entrepreneurial university ecosystem is expected to play an essential role
in promoting entrepreneurship and encouraging the community to take it up as an
alternative career.
Universities encourage entrepreneurial activities on campus in multiple ways to
influence the university community in adopting entrepreneurship as a career option
that will contribute to long-term economic and social development (Guerrero, Urbano,
& Fayolle, 2016). At this stage, the entrepreneurial university has to be considered as
an alternative career rather than an ultimate goal to create entrepreneurs. An
entrepreneurial university emphasis is to practically obtain first impressions of
developing start-ups and facing possible failure, as part of the entrepreneurial process.
In this way, Wright et al. (2017) argue that a university needs a strong framework
for understanding the ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship on campus. Very little
research has been done to understand the role of a university entrepreneurship
Chapter 2: Literature Review 19
ecosystem that supports coworking space. Therefore, this study addresses three aspects
that will play a prominent contribution to university entrepreneurship ecosystem:
supportive entrepreneurial environment, human capital, and support mechanisms.
These three aspects are related to each other and influence the role of the university in
supporting systems for sustainable entrepreneurship, and contribute to the flourish of
creativity and innovation.
2.2.1 Place: Supportive Entrepreneurial Environment
Entrepreneurial activity in a university requires a supportive environment, such
as services and infrastructure facilities that support the intention of society to conduct
entrepreneurial activity. Based on its characteristics, university coworking space can
lead to the combination of entrepreneurial service and infrastructure. Bouncken (2018)
argues that coworking space can link together with infrastructure, existing labs,
entrepreneurial education courses, coaching and other elements. In addition, members
who come from different faculties might bring heterogeneous sets of culture and
knowledge that will influence the environment as well as the university targets,
strategy and organisational culture that also will give impact to the environment of
coworking. In order to make the entrepreneurial environment more meaningful for the
community, opportunities for coworkers to express themselves or contribute to the
community need to be explored by professionals who can bring the coworking
environment alive.
At this stage, Merkel (2015) argues that coworking hosts play significant roles
to build communication, community and collaboration among the coworkers. She
describes that building a communication will develop networking and interaction
across people that will be the most frequent reason for an individual to join a
coworking space. In addition, sharing a common space provides community
engagement to a variant group of professionals and entrepreneurs starting and growing
businesses while working ‘alone together’ (Spinuzzi, 2012). Community engagement
and an environment with a sense of belonging, will also stimulate business
development. Since working with coworkers in the same community leads to
collaboration, Merkel (2015) argues that coworking hosts are responsible to organise
coworkers and enable a lively community within the space. In addition, Fuzi (2015)
points out that the service provided by coworking hosts may play a significant role in
developing different modes of engagement that stimulate interaction, networking and
20 Chapter 2: Literature Review
collaboration among members, even when most activities in coworking tend to happen
naturally. Thus, hosts play an important role in stimulating relationships and enabling
more synergies to happen.
In order to improve the community engagement and entrepreneurial skills of
coworkers, the hosts might organise some events, such as seminars, accelerators and
incubator programs. For the people who have weak entrepreneurial intentions,
coworking space allows combining the space with other programs such as accelerator
and incubator programs (Fuzi, 2015). An incubator is associated with the physical
placing of the start-ups that are organised by the incubation programs to give an
advisory and training service (Skala, 2019), help to setup selected new ventures with
seed capital, expertise, network access and infrastructure and thus provide
opportunities for collaboration, and connections to university coworking space
(Bouncken, 2018). Accelerators offer training courses of several months for selected
start-ups, providing contact to seed capital, mentoring and coaching (Bouncken, 2018)
focused on education to accelerate successful venture creation by providing specific
incubation services, and might be connected with university coworking space.
Additionally, coworking hosts might create the connection between coworkers
and faculties, university entities such as student clubs and organisations, or other
elements that beneficially will create sharing knowledge and fill the needs and
requirements of the community on infrastructure or property such as existing labs or
devices that belong to the university. What can be learnt from this? A university that
facilitates entrepreneurial environment would significantly contribute in creating the
potential of a university entrepreneurial climate to make the community actively
participate in the entrepreneurial process through coworking space.
2.2.2 People: Human Capital
A university has a wide range of actors, consisting of skilled and educated people
such as students, alumni, academic staff, researchers, professionals, and so on. Those
are university human capital that could be the important part of university
entrepreneurship. These creative, smart and innovative communities are considered to
be an important component for long-run smart, sustainable and inclusive development
(Suciu & Florea, 2017). Since they collaborate and work in the entrepreneurial
environment, all of these are significant factors to facilitate entrepreneurial activities
in exploring people’s creativity and innovation. Oganisjana (2015) argues that the
Chapter 2: Literature Review 21
exploration of people's creativity in the university is becoming of critical importance
because it can trigger students’ collaborative skills and openness to new experience,
open mind-sets and open behaviours, and readiness to solve social problems.
University entrepreneurship and start-ups could be the main university asset of
entrepreneurial activities (Criaco, Minola, Migliorini, & Serarols-Tarrés, 2014). Their
founders are university human capital who have a key strategic importance to
organisations and policymakers (McGuirk, Lenihan, & Hart, 2015). Therefore, the
survival of this entrepreneur is heavily dependent on the human capital characteristics
of their founders (McGuirk et al., 2015) and university entrepreneurship framework to
facilitate technology transfer and development, and improve human capital to be more
entrepreneurial (Moog, Werner, Houweling, & Backes-Gellner, 2015). This study,
furthermore, will explore the role of university in facilitating coworking to create
entrepreneurs by improving university human capital.
2.2.3 System: Support Systems
The emergence of economic and ICT contributes to the development of
entrepreneurship activities and highly relevant for the success of today’s societies in
creating new jobs, showing that most new jobs are created by entrepreneurial start-up
companies (Obschonka et al. 2017). Such as eBay, Facebook, Uber, PayPal, Twitter,
Amazon, and many more started their businesses as entrepreneurs and start-ups.
University coworking can be a fruitful avenue for students to gain work experience,
through involvement with industry sectors. The fact that Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) alumni have produced 25,800 companies that have generated 3.3
million jobs and $2 trillion in annual revenue (QUTbluebox, 2018). Entrepreneurial
knowledge through either formal and informal learning can significantly help students
to identify opportunity, learn how to solve problems, recognise their competencies,
learn about failure and success, manage resources, develop courage to retry and redo,
execute the vision, manage the risk, manage relationships, create networking, and so
on.
Supporting entrepreneurship is essential for the development and improvement
of entrepreneurs because an entrepreneurial environment will develop a stronger
entrepreneurial motivation, skills and intention (Mahto & McDowell, 2018). In this
way, entrepreneurs need strong support and advisory systems in order to turn their
start-up ideas into valuable businesses. In the context of a university, support systems
22 Chapter 2: Literature Review
can be university policies, strategies, funding, administration (Fichter & Tiemann,
2018), and an integrated concept for entrepreneurship (Bouncken, 2018), which all
contribute to improve entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and activities.
Additionally, a university coworking space also contributes in exploring the core
of university support systems such as research or implementation projects, the
organisational history and competencies background of universities, student interest
and demand (Fichter & Tiemann, 2018). Therefore, the involvement of a university by
creating support systems to establish an entrepreneurship environment on the campus
plays an important role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship
and encourage the community to take it up as a viable career alternative.
2.3 Collaborative Learning in University CWS
“In today’s knowledge economy, core skills that include creativity,
interdisciplinary thinking, problem solving, and the ability to
collaborate with others cannot be learned easily from books, but rather
through learning-by-doing and social interaction” (Bilandzic & Foth,
2013, p. 2)
The quote above emphasises the important of learning activities that can be
learned outside the classroom. In coworking space, entrepreneurship not only can be
learned through formal settings such as events, seminars, accelerators, coaching, and
so on, but also can be learned by experience through social interaction and learning by
doing, which provides stimuli to the senses outside of the common educational setting
(Caldwell, 2016). In this context, the characteristics of coworking allow it to be
described as a place that offers the combination of entrepreneurship through the formal
learning, learning-by-doing and social interaction that contribute to creativity and
innovation,
Collaborative environments and social relations are the main factors to foster
innovation. Coworking has a positive effect on creativity through a wide variety of
people participating, which creates a network of knowledge in an open atmosphere to
simplify the creation of new ideas (Schopfel et al., 2015). This work style has led to a
transformation of not only working spaces but also the way people work and
collaborate. Additionally, the emergence of university coworking spaces can give rise
to social interactions and knowledge sharing, which not only provide a sharing of
Chapter 2: Literature Review 23
working-spaces, but also entrepreneurship (Bouncken et al., 2018). Moreover,
university coworking can provide alternative career opportunities for students and
prepare them by practicing in the actual work condition. Therefore, university
coworking will help the community to foster creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial
activities.
Innovation and creativity are highly valuable competencies in knowledge
societies and collaboration is twenty-first century learning activities (Scott, 2015). By
being surrounded by entrepreneurs on a daily basis, coworkers are constantly learning
and growing (DeGuzman & Tang, 2011 in Fuzi, 2015). Additionally, Parrino (2015)
argues that knowledge sharing is one of the greatest benefits for coworking members.
At this point, Merkel (2015) points out that coworking significantly contributes to
providing the opportunity for the knowledge sharing between professionals and the
creation of collaborations that are important to develop businesses, especially start-ups
that do not have enough resources to operate without any support.
Moog et al., (2015) emphasised the reason why collaboration is important
because people specialised in one aspect are unbalanced; an individual therefore is
balanced in their skills and human capital when they have a broad skill set. In this case,
collaboration becomes important to fill the lack of skills of others. Moreover,
collaboration is stimuli for most innovation (White, 2016). Further, developing a
successful model for collaborative innovation, or innovating together, is thus the most
sorely needed variation in higher education. Therefore, collaboration between
individuals from different skills and area of expertise will result in creativity and
innovation.
There is compelling evidence that collaboration can benefit both individual and
collective knowledge growth (Scott, 2015) and increase trust, commitment, knowledge
sharing and creative processes (Füller, Matzler, Müller, Hautz, & Hutter, 2012). In
collaboration, coworkers will be engaged in enquiry-based learning, develop
knowledge content, and learn increasingly important skills, such as the ability to work
in teams, solve complex problems, and apply knowledge gained to other circumstances
(Barron and Darling-Hammond, 2008, in Scott, 2015). Additionally, collaboration can
occur in events and workshop programs that are provided by coworking space. Events
are designed to offer opportunities for members to create a wider professional network,
the ability to broker and recommend coworkers to outside clients, and to obtain useful
24 Chapter 2: Literature Review
information on how to access key resources such as funding. Workshops are designed
to provide opportunities for coworkers to get to know one another and strengthen the
sense of community (Butcher, 2013 cited in Brown, 2017). Thus, the goal of
collaboration in coworking space is to create new knowledge to prepare members for
real-life social and employment situations.
In collaborative learning, groups of learners are working together to solve a
problem, complete a task, or create a product so that the learners are challenged
socially and emotionally to engage in the discussions with different perspectives, and
are required to articulate and defend their ideas to create their own unique conceptual
frameworks and not rely solely on an expert's or a text's framework (M. M. Laal, Laal,
& Kermanshahi, 2012). According to Spinuzzi (2012), collaboration is a common
result of the interaction that naturally occurs in coworking space. Coworking space
enables members to interact, increase the possibility of 'unexpected meetings' and
ensure the circulation of knowledge and ideas; they can market their products to
demonstrate their work to external parties, increase their visibility and help identify
potential customers and/or collaboration partners and vice versa; and they have the
potential to help developing relationships between coworkers and local communities
(Brown, 2017). This can be a great opportunity for coworkers to improve their
entrepreneurial skills, networking and social interaction.
On the other hand, the space itself also provides an important role to make the
collaboration and social interaction occur in the coworking space. The open space can
play the role of social interaction to facilitate and improve the proximity among
coworkers (Bouncken & Reuschl, 2018). Merkel (2015) pointed out that the
coworking hosts need to develop a space that stimulates interaction between coworkers
to create a homey atmosphere and a diversity of work options. However, previous
studies have devoted little attention to the process of collaborative learning in
university coworking space. The combination of coworking space and collaborative
learning in promoting interaction and community engagement for entrepreneurship
activity is used to explore the utilisation of CWS and understand what that means to
the people and their community. Therefore, this study will explore the collaborative
learning of the university coworking space through understanding the nature of the
collaborative learning process for coworking members when they take part in a
Chapter 2: Literature Review 25
coworking space, and reveal the benefits and challenges that can be obtained by
coworkers in collaborating among members.
2.4 Summary
The literature review in this chapter is based on three main aspects: the evolution
and dynamic of the concept of coworking space, entrepreneurship in universities and
collaborative learning in a university coworking space. The purpose of this exploratory
study is guided by three fundamental questions, to understand the role of QUT Foundry
university coworking space in promoting collaborative learning as well as
entrepreneurial activities of the Foundry members. The case study allowed for a closer
understanding to focus on the experience people had within the coworking space.
The concept of the university coworking spaces provided the theories and
terminology necessary for the researcher as the detailed analysis of the role of
university coworking space. From this point, this study focuses on the aspect of a
supportive ecosystem in facilitating university coworking space. Furthermore,
collaborative learning is explored to seek the outcome of learning process of
coworking members in participating in collaboration.
This study provides new perspective of university coworking space in the circle
of university entrepreneurial ecosystem through exploring collaborative learning and
experience of coworkers in utilising coworking space. However, little attention has
been paid to what extent coworkers can learn something in the coworking as a
collaborative learning space. This research project addresses the gap in knowledge and
existing literature, and seeks to answer the main research question: how can university
coworking spaces be used to facilitate collaborative learning for entrepreneurship
activities? The next chapter outlines the research design and methodology applied to
support the principal research questions and sub-research questions.
Chapter 3: Research Design 27
Chapter 3: Research Design
This research aims to expand the understanding of collaborative learning in the
university coworking space by examining the case of QUT Foundry members in using
CWS in their entrepreneurship activities. This chapter presents the research design,
method of data collection and data analysis.
3.1 Methodology and Research Design
In this research, the researcher applied a qualitative approach for two reasons.
First, the study is exploratory in order to enquire about the role of university coworking
space in facilitating collaborative learning and entrepreneurial activities. Therefore,
through this method, the researcher can achieve an understanding of this phenomenon
by describing the role of the university entrepreneurial ecosystem (Creswell, 2014).
Second, the qualitative approach can provide a detailed understanding of the explored
issue. Stebbins (2014) argues that an exploratory approach is appropriate when there
is little or no scientific knowledge about the group, process, activity, or situation to be
examined, but nevertheless there is reason to believe it contains elements worth
discovering. Further, data was collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews
and analysed through thematic analysis to identify emerging patterns of reoccurring
themes (Creswell, 2014).
In other cases, ethnographic methods have been used by some researchers as a
basis of their research method to achieve an understanding of the coworking spaces
phenomenon (Bilandzic, 2013; Butcher, 2018; Waterslynch, 2018). Ethnography
employs a wide range of social or anthropology theory in analysing observations and
interactions in the field; insights from disciplines outside of organisational studies and
practice theory are occasionally drawn upon in the service of comprehending the
various dimensions of the complex phenomenon of coworking. Ethnography is the
analytical description of a culture gathered through the long term participation within
a group (WatersLynch, 2018). The author argues that focus on social practices,
interactions and the ‘culture’ of coworking bring ethnography as a fitting
methodological choice for coworking research. However, due to some circumstances,
28 Chapter 3: Research Design
such as limited duration of time for fieldwork to observe the coworking, the researcher
uses an exploratory qualitative approach for this study.
This study related qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews and supporting
documents that will be used for three other purposes. First, the document provided data
on the context of QUT policy in encouraging entrepreneurial activities in the academic
environment, thus helping the researcher to understand the role of QUT Foundry in
promoting entrepreneurship on campus. Second, the information contained in the QUT
Bluebook or related websites suggested the internal activities of the Foundry and
entrepreneurial ecosystem to get a clear picture of the strategic plan for entrepreneurial
activities in the QUT. Third, the information from participants was used to track the
entrepreneurial and collaborative learning experiences of members in utilising the
Foundry.
Table 3.1 List of Documents and the Information on Data Analysis Documents
Document Selected Data Analysed QUT Bluebook: Tips for Start-up
Founders at QUT (Second Edition, 2018)
1. Entrepreneurship Ecosystem at QUT
2. Entrepreneurship and Start-ups at QUT
3. QUT Entrepreneur objective and approach
Social Media: QUT Foundry’s Facebook
Page
https://www.facebook.com/QUTfoundry/
The Foundry’s programs and activities
Prior to further explanation about this research’s methods, data collection and
data analysis to examine the role of collaborative learning in a university coworking
30 Chapter 3: Research Design
The research design addresses the overarching research question of “How can
university CWS be used to facilitate collaborative learning for entrepreneurship
activities?” As the study progressed and data were collected, this question was then
broken down into three sub-questions:
1. What is the role of university coworking spaces?
2. What is the role of collaborative learning at the Foundry coworking space?
3. What are the benefits and challenges of collaborative learning for
entrepreneurship at the Foundry?
This research employed an exploratory qualitative method to address the
research questions. Meanwhile, the data were collected through interviews and
supporting documents, which were then analysed using thematic analysis.
3.2 Data Collection Methods
Over a period of three months (December 2018-February 2019), face-to-face
interviews were carried out with two groups of key informants: three CWS operators
and five coworkers. The normal number of users who came to the Foundry were
around 20-40 people in a day. During the days that researcher visited, researcher has
not seen additional new members that could be approached. The participants selected
for the study were all male and from the QUT community. A total of eight participants
were interviewed. The first group comprised three key informants from QUT Foundry
staff. The second group comprised five informants who were members of the Foundry.
The participants were happy to be interviewed about their experience working or
having utilised the Foundry.
The interviews were held at D and P blocks where the QUT Foundry is situated,
in a convenient place and during normal business hours, this setting being familiar to
all participants. The interviews took approximately 15-30 minutes each, depending on
the interviewee. The researcher restated the background and purpose of the study at
the beginning of each interview, and outlined details from the approved QUT ethics
documentation granted as part of the study. The participants were asked to give an
account of their overall impressions according to their experiences and knowledge.
Chapter 3: Research Design 31
The researcher personally transcribed all interviews prior to the data analysis phase of
the research.
According to Creswell (Creswell, 2014), a researcher who cannot directly
observe participants can conduct interviews to obtain useful information. In this way,
the researcher can ask specific questions and can create a response to the questions
without being forced into response possibilities. Second, by conducting interviews, the
researcher seeks to understand collaborative learning aspects in the Foundry that
encourage the entrepreneurial activities of its members.
One-on-one interviews were conducted to understand the participants’ point of
view. The participants were chosen purposively as per suggestion by QUT Foundry
staff to interview QUT Foundry members who meet criteria for being in the sample.
Purposive sampling provides a strategy to generate potential participants that could
provide useful data for the research (Creswell, 2014).
In addition, Guest et al (2006 in Fusch & Ness, 2015) noted that data saturation
may be attained by as little as six participants depending on the sample of the
population. Fusch et al (2015) added that data saturation is not about the numbers, but
about the depth of the data. Therefore, only a few people who might provide best
response were selected to develop a detailed understanding.
3.3 Ethical Consideration
Prior to the data collection phase, ethical clearance for the types of data sources
and approaches was sought and approved. Since a significant proportion of research
involved the participation of humans, with low risk impacts upon humans, an ethical
approval for Level 1 was sought. Level 1 (low risk) research involves human research
with no significant risks or ethical issues, or interviews involving non-sensitive
matters. Research projects that qualify for review under Level 1 are considered by the
QUT Human Research Ethics Committee. Ethical clearance no. 1800000983 was
granted for the researcher to conduct the interviews with the participants. After
permission was granted, the initial process of collecting data was started by sending
invitation and follow-up emails to the potential participants.
32 Chapter 3: Research Design
3.4 Data Analysis Method
The triangulation data was used in this research to establish the trustworthiness
of this study. The triangulation involved semi-structured interviews and document
analysis. The semi-structured interviews involved the key informants from QUT
Foundry staff and members, and the document analysis consisted of QUT Bluebook:
Tips for Start-up Founders and QUT Foundry social media.
A document analysis was conducted to gain understanding and derive meaning
of QUT entrepreneurial programs and activities. Document analysis is a form of
qualitative research that uses a systematic procedure to analyse documentary evidence
and answer specific research questions (Gross, 2020). Bowen (2009) pointed out that
document, both printed and electronic, can be analysed through skimming (superficial
examination), reading, and interpretation. Furthermore, document analysis can be part
of a qualitative research method due to a variety of purposes. Bowen (2009) states five
specific functions of document analysis. First, documents can provide context of the
research study and background information. Second, information contained in
document can suggest questions that need to be asked. Third, documents provide
supplementary research data. Fourth, documents can provide a means of tracking
change and development. Fifth, documents can be analysed to verify findings.
In this research, document analysis consists of QUT Bluebook: Tips for Start-up
Founders and QUT Foundry social media. The information on data analyse from The
QUT Bluebook was used to investigate the existing entrepreneurship ecosystem at
QUT, as well as QUT entrepreneurs and start-ups, and QUT entrepreneurship
objective and approach. Furthermore, researcher could see the Foundry programs and
activities through its social media. Documents in this study were also use for three
purposes. First, the document provided data on the context of QUT policy in
encouraging entrepreneurial activities in the academic environment, thus helping the
researcher to understand the role of QUT Foundry in promoting entrepreneurship on
campus. Second, the information contained in the QUT Bluebook or related websites
suggested the internal activities of the Foundry and entrepreneurial ecosystem to get a
clear picture of the strategic plan for entrepreneurial activities in the QUT. Third, the
information from participants was used to track the entrepreneurial and collaborative
learning experiences of members in utilising the Foundry.
Chapter 3: Research Design 33
Furthermore, deductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data obtained
from interviews and supporting documents as a method for identifying, analysing and
reporting patterns within the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). At this point, thematic
analysis is used to identify themes that are interesting or important. This analysis
involves a form of pattern within the data by careful reading and re-reading this data
to understand the potential of any issue more widely as it describes the dataset in detail.
(Braun & Clarke, 2006).
Before beginning the thematic analysis, the audio data were transcribed and the
coding was done manually as well as with the help of the software NVivo 12. This is
a process to transform the spoken texts into written texts and to check the transcripts
against the original audio recording to ensure accuracy. Braun and Clarke (2006)
outline a deductive approach to thematic analysis following the process of (1)
familiarisation the researcher with the data, (2) generating initial code, (3) searching
for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) producing
the reports. The theories and case studies reviewed in the literature review, particularly
coworking space theory, guided the thematic analysis of the data collected
3.5 Summary
Early in the research process when the research topic was selected, the researcher
determined that the qualitative method was the most appropriate approach to use to
investigate the role of collaborative learning in university coworking space as the
potential emergence of entrepreneurial activities in a university. This qualitative
methodological approach is especially appropriate to explore and understand the
phenomena that are new or that have not been studied (Eisenhardt, 2016). In this case,
the coworking phenomenon in a university has not been so far theorised, or little
research has focused on its study, specifically on the role of collaborative learning that
impacts on the entrepreneurial activities of its members to understand what this
coworking space means to the people and their community. Facing this lack of
previous research, thematic analysis was used for identifying, analysing and reporting
patterns within data (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to provide the optimal conditions to access
dynamic sources of data.
34 Chapter 3: Research Design
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 35
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
This chapter will provide results of this study and discussions of the analysis process
used for the findings during the study and the linking theory with the literature
developed during the course of the study. The case data were found to enrich relevant
information regarding the first research question about the key findings of the role of
university coworking space in promoting and encouraging entrepreneurship on the
campus.
In the first part of the interview, participants were required to give a brief of their
current background and their relationship with QUT Foundry. The participants in this
study consist of eight people that are divided by two groups: three QUT staff and five
QUT Foundry members.
Table 4.1 Participants of this study
No Participant Status Relationship to Foundry 1 QS1 QUT Staff Support entrepreneurial activities and engage
to work with start-up
2 QS2 Foundry Staff Support entrepreneurial activities and engage
to work with start-up and networking
3 QS3 Foundry Staff Manage and support entrepreneurial event
activities
4 FM1 QUT Student QUT Foundry member
5 FM2 QUT Student QUT Foundry member
6 FM3 QUT Student QUT Foundry member
7 FM4 QUT Staff QUT Foundry member
8 FM5 QUT Alumni QUT Foundry member
Introduced by Braun & Clarke (2006), the theme was developed from the
transcript, using the thematic analysis with six-phase approach as outlined below.
Phase 1: Familiarisation the researcher with the data. The transcript was read
a few times to become familiar with the data. During this phase, the researcher started
taking notes or marking ideas for coding any initial list of ideas that were considered
important and interesting enough to analyse.
Phase 2: Generating initial code. Once the researcher read a few times and
familiarised with the data, the initial codes were grouped by organising data into
meaningful groups. By identifying important or interesting aspects, the data items will
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 39
Figure 4.4 Intersection of Place, People and System
4.1.1 Place for Connection, Entrepreneurship Environment and Learning
Place is a venue where people can meet and interact in a formal or informal
environment. The majority of members in QUT Foundry seemed to have a positive
experience in using the Foundry as a place for making a connection or meeting point.
QUT Foundry provided connection among the members, between members and
internal entities in QUT or members and industry. The following QUT Staff referred
to the Foundry as a place to go to and have a say:
“The foundry approaches encouraging collaboration to members by
providing a community area, as well as a lot of events where people
have the opportunity to get to know each other and see what's going on
and being worked on.” (QS3, 2019).
It indicated that the Foundry has created a culture to make members connect to each
other through creating events. Events would provide an opportunity for members to
socialise with others and develop new professional relationships, meet new friends,
share knowledge of what and how people are doing entrepreneurship.
Events were one of several programs in the Foundry to make members connect
with each other. The outcome of this connection would generate an entrepreneurial
environment in the Foundry. One of the QUT staff who were interviewed stated,
“When all those people come together there are more chances of
connection between those people on greater things that happen in sense
of the community for the place. All these people are connecting in a
40 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
non-pressured, positively social way, looking to start a business. So, the
community itself is growing as well, not just small teams.” (QS2, 2019).
In this interview, QS2 expressed his concern about the sense of community and how
members are connecting in an organic way. This could be an opportunity for the
member to start or improve their entrepreneurship activities by creating a bigger team,
and also members could learn new skills and apply those skills in the context of their
business or being employed by someone else.
This is in line with one of the analysed documents that QUT supports several
programs to improve entrepreneurial skills of students, alumni and staff. These
programs were provided by QUT to support early stage ventures, from one-on-one
mentoring through to start-up accelerator programs and an early stage investment fund
(QUTbluebox, 2018, p. 16). The Foundry also provided entrepreneurial seminars as
the opportunity for members to learn about the current issues of entrepreneurship and
could be great ways to meet with other entrepreneurs and experts (QUTbluebox, 2018,
p. 26). The benefits of being a member of QUT Foundry have been confirmed by the
majority of members. FM3 expressed his experience that the most important thing in
the Foundry is the community and the networking behind the members (FM3, 2019).
In addition, networking that is provided by the Foundry was formed by sort of different
skills of people in order to give an opportunity for the members to learn what they need
in doing the entrepreneurship. One of the QUT Foundry members stated,
“The benefits are that they've a great group of people around them. The
facilities especially allow you to get into contact with a whole lot of
people if you wish to get in contact with them, for any reason like
business, personal, or even or Uni-related. So, it's a great resource to
have as a student and even better as someone looking to go to or create
your own business.” (FM1, 2019).
FM2, who is an IT student, stated,
“I’m IT but I'm not really good at business but there's someone in the
Foundry who I know is really good at business. I can go talk to them
about a problem I'm having. Yeah, I think that really kind of helps.
Cover the whole space of entrepreneurship rather than just the let's
build an IT product.” (FM2, 2019).
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 41
Another member also says,
“For me, I am specifically more interested to collaborate with someone
with a sales and marketing skillset because I'm a very technical person,
I'm an engineer myself so I want to find someone who can complement
whatever I left off.” (FM4, 2019)
This quote reinforces the previous statement that networking with
interdisciplinary people provided benefits to fill the existing gaps of entrepreneurial
activities among QUT Foundry members. They have acknowledged the networking
environment in the Foundry as a means through which they were supported towards
entrepreneurial activities.
The Foundry had a supportive environment that was important for its members
doing entrepreneurial activities. The role of community managers in facilitating
comfortable ambience as part of the Foundry services for entrepreneurship also
contributed in positive ways for its members. One of the QUT staff who was
interviewed stated, “QUT put someone in there all the time who could make start-ups
come in, talk to them about what the Foundry was, and what their opportunities at
QUT were around start-ups, answer and engage with students.” (QS1, 2018).
The following is a quote from FM2 who expressed his experience working with
the facilitator,
“The community managers were more than a help; they kind of support
the students to get what they need to kind of keep building what they're
building and have been awesome at setting up meetings and helping us
get work, what I need to succeed. All of the facilitators know very
important, very experienced people in the wider Brisbane community,
which is great.” (FM2, 2019).
This indicates that QUT is always present and ready to help the Foundry members by
providing their staff who have a vital position to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Therefore, the Foundry is not only a place for its members to develop start-ups
or entrepreneurship but also could be a learning place for knowledge sharing either
among members who have an interdisciplinary academic background, community
managers, or someone or start-ups who are more advanced in doing entrepreneurship.
At this point, FM3 was saying, “We have a mutually beneficial relationship and we
42 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
respect each other and we do it. We help each other out as much as we can; networks
come naturally and the facilitators at the moment are really good.” (FM3, 2019)
4.1.2 People: User Group
Many elements are involved in the Foundry. The interviews provided insight
into the different groups of people who engaged with the Foundry and their
motivations for interacting with it. The four different user groups that have been
identified are QUT staff and the stakeholders, Foundry members, QUT entities and
outside of QUT community. This indicates that each group had different purposes and
motivational factors that influence how people interact to the Foundry.
Acknowledging the user groups assists in identifying the needs of different people who
make up the entrepreneurial ecosystem in QUT.
Firstly, for QUT as a stakeholder, Arun Sharma, Deputy Vice Chancellor QUT
Division of Research and Commercialisation, saw entrepreneurship as a way to take
QUT research to market, to increase its impact and create social and economic gain
for QUT and the wider community (QUTbluebox, 2018 p.49). In addition, one of the
QUT staff who was interviewed stated that the Foundry was created in 2016 in
response to a request from a number of people in the ecosystem Business School, QUT
Starters’, QUT Bluebox, industrial design, and also the Design School to create a
coworking space with start-ups to collaborate and work together (QS1, 2018). QS2
also pointed out that the Foundry was created to be part of the entrepreneurial
ecosystem in QUT to promote entrepreneurial activities across the university and tries
to co-ordinate with the different entities that exist on campus (QS2, 2019). It can be
seen that the Foundry has a complex role and more responsibility for entrepreneurship
activities across the University.
In term of the hosts’ roles of the Foundry, the hosts have significant roles in
promoting entrepreneurship in QUT. QS1 pointed out that the Foundry hosts
“… regularly run information sessions on everything from what's
intellectual property, how do you identify and stay protected, through
to getting guest entrepreneur in coming in telling their stories to give
people some insight into what it was like to be an entrepreneur…”
(QS1, 2017).
QS3 also added that what the Foundry hosts used to do was,
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 43
“… apart from an email to everybody around the university and the
social media channels, was to try and co-ordinate with the different
entities that exist on campus because there's a very long list, between
QUT bluebox, CEA, QUT Starters, Enactus, Code Network, HerHub,
QUT Enterprise, and so on…” (QS2, 2018).
Secondly, among QUT Foundry members, consisting of students, staff and
alumni, each person had different purposes and motivational factors in using the space.
Based on the interview of 5 (five) QUT Foundry members, FM2 was joining the
Foundry not purely because he wanted to be an entrepreneur but to do something else
that was not part of his study (FM2, 2019). When he was asked why he joined the
Foundry, his response was,
“I had a bit of a rough time halfway through last year. I had a bit of a
burnout. I was sick of uni, sick of work. I just wanted to quit everything
and go do something else and I spoke to a friend of mine that I was
feeling a bit burnt out and he said that coming to the Foundry is really
great place to work because the community there really kind of sets
your mental state in a good healthy direction.” (FM2, 2019)
Other than that, FM3 was conducting entrepreneurial activities in the Foundry,
starting by his personal experience in that he was unsatisfied with a piece of equipment
and trying to solve this problem by creating something better. Unexpectedly, the
equipment he made was marketable and had a great response from the market. This
indicates that the passion to solve problems can be a way to build a business. FM5 had
a similar experience through different ways with FM3. FM5 was trying to solve the
problems he faced by doing some research to obtain the ideas. This indicates that trying
to solve a problem can generate the innovation.
Thirdly, as part of the QUT entrepreneurial ecosystem, the Foundry had a
networking activity with the entities to support each other in encouraging the QUT
community in doing entrepreneurial activities. A QUT staff member who was
interviewed stated,
“Part of what we used to do apart from an email to everybody around
the university and the social media channels was to try and co-ordinate
with the different entities that exist on campus because there's a very
44 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
long list between QUT bluebox, CEA, QUT Starters, Enactus, Code
Network, HerHub, QUT Enterprise, etc. They are all different entities.”
(QS2, 2019)
Even though all entities in QUT have their own management, they are connected to
each other in the QUT entrepreneurial ecosystem as a means for entrepreneurial
activities.
Fourthly, is the external party. The participants who were interviewed mentioned
about some elements outside the QUT circle that also were involved in the process of
entrepreneurial ecosystems such as funding from the investors, networking with
industries, knowledge sharing with professionals, and so on. This indicates that
although the Foundry was a university coworking space for the internal QUT
community such as students, staff and alumni, it also had a mutually beneficial
connection with the outside elements.
The Foundry community managers also had the role to make some events and
invite professional outside the QUT to share their experiences and knowledge with the
members. This can be opportunity to link between internal community with the
external party. The entrepreneurs-in-residence that provided by QUT are also part of
building networking with industries. The external party are involved with several
projects with Foundry start-ups (QS1, QS2, QS3, and FM3, 2019), as well as provide
funding for the potential start-ups.
4.1.3 Supported Entrepreneurial System
The majority of the users in the Foundry seemed to have a positive attitude
toward the place and people. The sense of community in a place like the Foundry is
quite strong, where many people collaborate and help each other. In addition, the
Foundry is part of the QUT entrepreneurial ecosystem that allowed people to build
entrepreneurship. The interviews reveal three supporting aspects that generate the
entrepreneurial ecosystem in QUT: infrastructure and academic resources, community
and culture, and financial funding capital.
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 45
First, as a university, QUT has supporting infrastructure and academic resources
that can be used to facilitate the needs of entrepreneurial activities of the Foundry
members. One of the benefits of university coworking space is the facilities and
infrastructure support to be used for entrepreneurial activities. As shown at Figure 6,
this was one of the Foundry goals. As QS2 stated,
“The goal of the Foundry is to be as connected as possible across all
the university in terms of we’ve got 6 faculties, 24 schools, 2 institutes
and 2 subsidiary companies to co-ordinate in the spirit of
entrepreneurship. So, the goal is to have all of them connected, working
together in entrepreneurship.” (QS2, 2019).
It can be understood that developing start-ups needs connection with other elements to
fill the gaps that can generate creativity and innovation.
While all of them are connected, the Foundry member can come and find aid
programs and the other people can see inspiration, motivation and the ideas; members
also can take this opportunity to collaborate with them to increase their own
entrepreneurship opportunity. However, in the interviews, I find that FM3 had a
difficult experience to interact with one of QUT faculties, “We've got a network of
some of the best experts in the world sitting right in this university but what we found
is that if we’re talking to faculty, it can be quite difficult.” (FM3, 2019) FM4 also had
a similar experience when he proposed to the Foundry to use university devices for
prototyping a hardware.
Figure 4.5 Foundry in QUT Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
46 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
Second, the Foundry has financial support to run the university CWS so that
members are not required to pay the rent of space, use its facilities and are involved in
some programs that support entrepreneurship. In term of funding for a member’s
project, in some cases, the Foundry facilitated the meeting between members who had
marketable innovation and the investor. In other cases, Foundry members need to fund
their project or try to develop their relationship with the investor. Foundry members
also can be involved with a number of start-up accelerator programs that offer funding,
dedicated office space, mentoring and industry connection to improve their start-up
(QUTbluebox, 2018, p. 18). It can be seen that QUT has prepared a supported
entrepreneurial system to help students, alumni and staff in developing start-ups.
Third, the environment in the Foundry was formed by a diverse base to create
members having a sense of community by helping each other. The foundry could
provide a place for those people to come together to work and form start-ups so they
have a chance of succeeding because they have good cross-section skills (QS1, 2018).
The following participant referred to the Foundry as a place to get and give help: “You
can get help on certain things with a whole range of backgrounds, like from
engineering to business to a lot of things.” (FM1, 2019) FM1 referred to the Foundry
as a place where people with different academic backgrounds help each other.
Another user stated,
“The facilitators and other people, if I don't know something I can ask
them and almost always they've got the right answer or they know
someone who can help me. And I think it's an awesome place to get
challenged and to really thrive in.” (FM2, 2019)
From FM2’s point of view, the Foundry is a great place to learn something to solve
problems and for self-development. This indicates that with the sense of community
at QUT and also the culture of mutual assistance and collaboration, it will be a good
basis for building entrepreneurship at QUT.
Fourth, QUT also supports the creativity and innovation of individuals or start-
ups by offering protection on the copyright or intellectual property (IP) of an invention
and conferring a legal right to exploit it for commercial gain for a period of 20 years
(QUTbluebox, 2018, p. 58). This can be seen that QUT not only promotes creativity
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 47
and innovation to become a product through developing start-ups, but also gives
protection on any invention generated by creativity and innovation of creators.
4.2 Coworking as Collaborative Learning Space
The second sub-research question in this study aims to understand the role of the
collaborative learning of Foundry members in doing entrepreneurship. In relation to
the collaborative practices in the Foundry, this study revealed that the Foundry hosts
play an important role to manage the collaborative environment in the Foundry.
Previous studies have argued that collaboration tends to occur through the social
interaction among coworkers. According to Spinuzzi (2012), collaboration tends to the
social interaction that organically occurs in coworking space that enable coworkers to
increase the possibility of knowledge and ideas sharing. The participants who were
interviewed confirmed that they never felt pushed by the hosts to collaborate with
others, the collaboration in the Foundry were occurred organically. Therefore, the
findings are consistent with previous studies that the Foundry could facilitate and put
together people with various skills to develop entrepreneurial skills, and people could
come together to work and collaborate organically to build start-ups that can be a
chance of succeeding as they are use interdisciplinary collaboration skills. To some
extent, this study also revealed that through interdisciplinary collaboration, the
participants have ability to recognise the weaknesses that led them to select appropriate
persons to fill the team work of start-up.
In the Foundry, the collaboration to work together among members came
organically (QS1, 2018 and QS2, 2019) with the sense of community (QS2, 2019). In
the QS3 point of view (QS3, 2019), the way the Foundry approached encouraging
collaboration in members was by providing a community area, as well as a lot of events
where people have the opportunity to get to know each other and see what is going on
and being worked on. Furthermore, QS1 stated that the role of community managers
in terms of the collaboration were more than a help to support the members to get what
they need to keep building what they are building (QS1, 2018).
The support that the Foundry provided to the members was not to force the
member to build the business or start entrepreneurship, as QS2 said,
“The focus of the Foundry was not so much a focus to start a members’
business. There’s no pressure to start a business, it’s all about
48 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
entrepreneurial education. So, members can participate in the Foundry
activities for a whole year and the primary purpose is for
entrepreneurial education, developing the skills and the mindset to be
able to go, do this either in the context of their own business or they go
and apply these skills in the job that they take up.” (QS2, 2019)
This indicates that even though QUT had a target of creating many entrepreneurs
from students, staff and alumni, this does not mean that they force them to create a
new business. The Foundry is more present in order to provide knowledge about
entrepreneurship and allow members to determine their own interests in
entrepreneurship with no obligation.
Based on the interviews, the potential of collaborative learning in the Foundry is
generated to entrepreneurial activities among members in three forms; those are
interdisciplinary collaboration, social interaction skills and managerial skills as will be
described in the next section.
4.2.1 Interdisciplinary Collaboration
As a university coworking space, the Foundry was surrounded by cross-skilled,
educated people that can be an opportunity for its members to develop their
entrepreneurial activities to identify and solve the problems.
“I think there are benefits of the different skill sets because the Foundry
is open to all students and it's a really diverse base. It's good to lean on
other members so that there's a substantial group of IT students that
use the Foundry. But there's also a lot of designers and business people,
finance and economic stuff. And I think when we're all in that room
together, our skills kind of fill each other's gaps a bit.” (FM2, 2019)
This indicates that interdisciplinary collaboration also can give benefits for knowledge
sharing that also can generate new inspiration, creativity and innovation, all of which
are required for the entrepreneurial activities.
This study also revealed that the collaboration among members has led
participants’ awareness to learn managerial skills in term of managing their startups.
Due to the participants of this study being from technical educational backgrounds,
they realised that they needed to learn managerial and marketing skills in order to
maintain their startups. Additionally, some participants decided to select a person who
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 49
had management background to join in their start-ups. This study confirmed the
Bouncken & Reuschl (2018) study that interdisciplinary collaboration can lead to
knowledge sharing to fill the gap in startups and generate creative process.
4.2.2 Social Interaction Skills
The collaborative learning in the Foundry also allows members to improve their
social awareness and a sense of community to help each other, build networking, learn
from others and see where change could be made through giving one’s opinion or
listening to the opinion of others. FM3 stated, “We often find ourselves helping a little
bit more than we do know and getting advice from people around us.” (FM3, 2019)
This indicates that social interaction skills are one of the important and essential parts
of entrepreneurship. In addition, QS3 also stated, “I do also occasionally utilise the
contacts to the networking opportunities to find customers and people that are able to
mentor or provide feedback on the approach we're taking within our company.” (QS3,
2019) This also indicates that the process of co-creation, where other people can say
what they want by giving feedback on the product, would allow people to share their
desires and ideas, and is something that would be attractive to entrepreneurial activities
and could be a useful tool to stimulate improvement.
4.2.3 Managerial Skills
Coworking spaces usually consist of freelance people from different sorts of
professionals, not all being people who have knowledge in doing business and
management. Through collaboration, it allows members to work together and learn the
process of doing a business, business requirements, business management, human
resources management, how to nurture and improve the business, pitch or sell the
ideas, know the market, and so on. This participant talked about how he collaborated
with others,
“For me, I am specifically more interested to collaborate with someone
with a sales and marketing skillset. The reason is because I'm a very
technical person, I'm an engineer myself so I want to find someone who
can complement whatever I left off. So, looking for another engineer
will be good but it still won't help you to sell stuff. So you know how to
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 51
As seen in Figure 4.7, FM1 is an example of participants who use the Foundry
as a working space. FM1 stated,
“I heard through a couple of friends to go to that space that really feeds
off other people and you can get to help on certain things with a whole
range of backgrounds, like from engineering to business to a lot of
things and I was looking to do my own thing regarding some sort of
start-ups or some sort of project that I could do on the side of the
university. And that's why I found the Foundry.” (FM1, 2019).
This participant states that place as a venue where people can get help from each other
and interact with others from different skills backgrounds benefits him to learn
something related to activities where people feel inspired, acquire or modify
knowledge and skills. His motivation utilising the Foundry is to get assistance from
different skills to support his entrepreneurship project. Typically, a coworking space
as a place is characterised by a range of one or more activities associated with the
motivation of people to obtain work (FM1, FM2, FM3, FM4 and FM5), networking
(FM1, FM2, FM3), meeting point (FM4), play (FM1 and FM2), and learning (FM1,
FM2, FM3 and FM5).
Figure 4.7 FM1 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram
52 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
Different to other participants, in the beginning, the motivation of FM5 used the
Foundry as a place to do research to obtain an inspiration and idea for his
entrepreneurship project and his degree has helped him to create a product and start-
up. He stated, “… I used the Foundry as an area to go out and do a lot of research for
an idea. I did and then developed my skills around pitching and how investors work,
which was useful at that time. And three years later, everyone's talking about start-
ups.” (FM5, 2019). This participant tends to see the coworking space as a place for
doing research to get something new as an entrepreneurial process of discovering an
idea for developing a start-up. While he is doing research and learning things about
the start-up, he is obtaining ideas and this to him is a meaningful entrepreneurial
experience, which contributes to the future goal of entrepreneurship that creatively
creates innovations. This indicates that the environment of the Foundry helps him in
the early stage of developing a start-up.
The supportive environment of the Foundry also gives significant impact to the
entrepreneurial process where participants can take benefits from the people who are
community managers and who build networking, supporting entrepreneurial events in
the Foundry. FM2 stated,
“… working with the facilitators as well is a huge benefit. Having
someone there that works with the uni is really, really helpful because
like if we have troubles I would say we need a room booked but we want
to run an event in the space or we need help from someone, it's really
good to ask the people running the Foundry. So, at times I've needed to
speak to other people at the University about what kind of facilities they
have, like IT stuff, and foundry facilitators have been awesome at
setting up meetings and helping us get work, which is what I need to
succeed.” (FM2, 2019).
In the Foundry, he found the environment has supported the collaboration for
entrepreneurship and he felt satisfied with the Foundry services of facilitators who
were helpful in supporting members’ entrepreneurial process.
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 53
Another participant supports FM2 thoughts, however refers to the potential of
the collaboration aspect and gives valuable argument to what aspects of the Foundry
worked well in helping to attract the attention of participants,
“We have so much respect for community leaders that, when facilitators
come to us and ask us to do something, we'll do it every single time. So,
we have a mutually beneficial relationship and we respect each other
and we do it. We help each other out as much as we can.” (FM3, 2019).
This indicates that services and facilities provided by the Foundry, as well as
community engagement that has happened in the Foundry, have proven to give
benefits and attract more people to come and use the space as their working space.
Place, people and systems are integrated in the Foundry coworking space to promote
a collective entrepreneurial experience for participants through the processes of
networking, collaborative working, events and learning. This approach is intended to
attract the involvement of all people regardless of their academic backgrounds. From
the interviews, we can see that the participants can take benefit from the value of sense
of community and the members’ various academic backgrounds to fill the gaps needed
Figure 4.8 FM2 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram
54 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
for their entrepreneurship process. However, finding someone who has similar
common interests and can work together as a start-up team might be a challenge.
The following excerpt is an example of a participant who mentions he needed to
use his connections to find someone who can fill the weakness of his start-up,
“… I started building my own product and then I used my connections
that I met through university to find people that actually could build it…
we have to build a team because you’ve got to feel the weaknesses and
find some other people's strengths …” (FM5, 2019).
On the one hand, this indicates that even though coworking space consists of many
people from different backgrounds, it does not mean that it is easy to find someone
who is appropriate to fill the vacant position and join in a team to build a start-up. On
the other hand, this participant has turned out to be one step ahead in recognising their
weakness and opportunities to develop their start-up.
Another participant, FM3 talked about developing his start-up with his friend
who had a similar common interest. They collaborated by identifying the problem from
their experience of using an uncomfortable product and successfully tried to solve the
problem and execute the production of a marketable product. This indicates that
Figure 4.9 FM3 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 55
recognising and trying to solve problems can be a significant competence to inspire
the creativity and innovation that is also significant for developing start-ups.
In terms of the production process, funding is an important part for participants’
entrepreneurial activities. At this stage, FM3, FM4 and FM5 are involved in pitching
ideas programs that are organised either by QUT or another outside party. This has
helped FM3 and FM5, in winning several awards on their innovation and obtaining
funding from investors who are interested in their products. While FM5 obtained
sponsors from interstate investments, the Foundry host also contributed, introducing
FM3 to QUT investment that ended up with investment. FM3 stated, “The funding is
quite important for us. Actually, we are lucky enough to have a QUT investor to invest
in our company.” (FM3, 2019). However, different to other participants, FM4 could
not get investors and that made him struggle to develop his start-up by using his
funding to buy a device that required creation of a prototype. He was trying to contact
the Foundry to help in allowing him to use one of the QUT devices in creating a
prototype, but he never had any good response on it. It shows that obstacles are still
happening in the Foundry in providing the required devices.
Figure 4.10 FM4 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram
56 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
The participants who were interviewed predominantly felt the Foundry has
significantly made a place to improve their entrepreneurial skills. They felt satisfied
with the collaborative environment of the Foundry where a communication channel
was created, which led them to feel closer to each other and helped to establish a better
sense of community. Overall, it was a valuable experience and fostered a sense of place
as people were able to engage each other and create start-ups based on what they
learned from others or how they felt about knowledge sharing. FM2 clearly stated
about the collaborative environment in the Foundry,
“… the facilitators and other people, if I don't know something I can
ask them and almost always they've got the right answer or they know
someone who can help me. And I think it's an awesome place to get
challenged and to really thrive in.” (FM2, 2019).
At the developing stage, every participant also has different entrepreneurial
experience and focus on their activities. While other participants already have
teamwork, FM2 still wanted to focus on building a team with selected people. On the
other hand, FM4 is still improving his business by learning something that can improve
his startup. FM4 stated, “I'm still in a learning stage and I'm still trying to get whatever
Figure 4.11 FM5 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 57
I started off, trying to bring it to a place that is more meaningful. So right now, I
haven’t yet any success story to share.” (FM4, 2019). Overall, most participants are
currently active attending entrepreneurial programs and sharing their experience to
inspire coworking space members in developing start-ups. This indicates that the role
of the Foundry so far has created positive impact to assisting QUT community to
establish a sense of community through a supportive entrepreneurial environment that
promotes creativity and innovation.
4.4 Supportive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
QUT has created a model of entrepreneurial ecosystem on the campus to flourish
and mould entrepreneurs from students, alumni and staff by providing a range of
programs to support the entrepreneurship process from the early stage of ventures until
they go public, from one-on-one mentoring through to start-up accelerator programs
and an early stage investment fund. The entrepreneurial ecosystem in QUT has
significantly contributed to create an entrepreneurial environment to attract people to
learn and practice entrepreneurship. This study confirmed previous studies (Fichter &
Tiemann, 2018) that the integration between supportive environment, human capital
and entrepreneurial system were three important factors to generate creativity and
innovation and contribute to improve entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and activities.
The supportive entrepreneurial environment at QUT could be perceived by the
participants as a supportive system to encourage people to come and be involved in
entrepreneurial activities. At this stage, the Foundry hosts had significant roles in
maintaining the daily operations of coworking space by providing services and
entrepreneurial programs such as mentors, events and seminars to improve
entrepreneurial skills of the Foundry members. The Foundry also provided networking
with diverse groups of people and encouraged the participants to take benefits to create
connection with professionals, academic staff, entrepreneurs or other parties. The
findings are consistent with the Bouncken (2018) argument that university coworking
space tends to create collaboration and knowledge sharing with a diverse group of
people.
Previous studies have argued that the group of people who were involved in the
university entrepreneurship could be the main asset of entrepreneurial activities
(Criaco et al., 2014). This study provides evidence that the group of people in the
58 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
entrepreneurial ecosystem in QUT, which consists of QUT stake holders, the Foundry
members, QUT entities and external parties such as professionals, investors and so on,
have not only been used to impact to entrepreneurial process of coworkers, but also to
some extent positively develop the sense of community in the Foundry where many
people help each other to succeed the development of start-ups in the Foundry.
Entrepreneurial support systems could play an important role in the above
findings. According to Bouncken (2018) and Fichter & Tiemann (2018), support
systems such as university policies, strategies, funding, administration and an
integrated concept for entrepreneurship, contribute to improve entrepreneurial skills,
knowledge and activities. This study also revealed that participants who were
interviewed have opportunities to get support for their entrepreneurial activities and
this has allowed people to develop their start-ups in creative ways.
4.5 Users’ Challenge
Although all participants expressed their good experiences with the Foundry, on
the other part, they also were experiencing some issues when using the Foundry. This
can be considered by the Foundry as a recommendation to improve their service.
4.5.1 Lack of Information about the Foundry and Members’ Profiles
FM1 stated, “… without Community Managers, we don't know what the other
users doing. There's no information that tells you what everyone does.” (FM1, 2019)
FM1 expressed his difficulties to get information of the Foundry members’ academic
background or activities. As result, he had difficulty when he needs someone from
certain academic backgrounds to give him an advice from the different point of view.
Additionally, FM2 added that regardless circulating the newsletter to members’ email
or posting on social media, the Foundry needs to consider to have own website that
can give information about past, current and future activities. FM2 says,
“I think if they had like an IT system […] they could keep a record of
like they newsletters and events in a system where people could book
events through that. […] And also, just like as a notification, kind of
platform for what's going on at the Foundry, I think it'd be good to
reach not just the people who are using it but any people who are
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 59
thinking about coming to the Foundry they can look through.” (FM2,
2019).
This indicate that the Foundry needs to consider the way they spread information to its
members.
4.5.2 Challenge in Supportive System
As a world-class university, QUT has more than sufficient academic resources
such as labs, ICT’s equipment, expert, and so on that ideally can support and assist the
Foundry members’ entrepreneurial activities. Practically, some members reported
their difficulty to get support from QUT. For example, in the interview, FM4 stated
that his start-up needs a 3D printer to create a prototype. He requested to get a permit
to use QUT facilities and properties, but he never gets respond from QUT. FM4 says,
“… only one thing I was thinking I can improve is that Foundry could
have some facilities that can do hardware prototyping such as laser
cutters or 3D printer. To make a space you can drill car and they don’t
provide them. So Foundry don't have and I did request at that time but
it didn't happen until now, it was two years ago.” (FM4, 2019)
FM3 also stated,
“The biggest thing I think within the university as a whole is the
interaction with the Foundry and entrepreneurship with faculty should
be all one thing, that is fantastic. One day, we need to be able to contact
the faculty. We've got a network of some of the best experts in the world
sitting right in this university and getting paid to be here. But when we
need help from them, we don't even get emails back from the faculty.
But it's just my experience. I sent emails and not get a response back.
We tend to get stonewalled a little bit.” (FM3, 2019)
This indicates that the access for the Foundry members to use university resources was
still being limited.
4.5.3 The Foundry Physical Condition
As a coworking provided for students, staff and alumni, the Foundry is a great
place for them to collaborate and create networking. However, FM5 did not feel
comfortable with the distraction in the Foundry. He stated,
60 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
“The foundry is great for collaborating ideas and getting people. So
that it's great for that those people commute going there as a community
and start talking ideas and let that refusal of noise. When you've gone
past that stage you can't be around. You can't get the work done, too
loud and too distracting. And the foundry is just too distracting. It's
constantly noisy and I can't take business goals there.” (FM5, 2019)
Compare to other participants who were being interviewed, FM5 is more senior in
developing start-up because he has been in the Foundry since the beginning the
Foundry stood up. This indicates that the length of period time and more advanced
users in conducting entrepreneurship, they will need a quiet space to avoid the
distraction.
Spinuzi (2012) pointed out that coworkers had different expectation concerning
space design, trust, feedback, learning, and partnerships. Some coworkers expected to
work in collaborative environment whereas others expected to work in quite place.
These conditions show that CWS provide opportunities to create positive relationship
between autonomous and independent members (Bilandzic & Foth, 2013). However,
without mutual respect amongst CWS users, it leads to conflict. Therefore, Bouncken
et al. (2018) stated that CWS needs to communicate the norms and values of CWS
with the users to develop a climate based on trust, mutual respect and good
relationship.
4.6 Summary
This chapter discussed five domains that obtain from the data collection during
the interview of participants. First, the intersection of place, people and system
generated creativity and innovation that would contribute to improve entrepreneurial
skills, knowledge and activities of coworkers. Second, coworking as collaborative
learning space led members to involve in some events provided by the Foundry and
the social interaction with members from other disciplines would give opportunity to
get to know each other and result in interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as
managerial skills in developing start-up. Third, entrepreneurial journey of members
revealed the significant part of members’ entrepreneurial experiences in utilising
university coworking space, related to place, people and system. Fourth, supportive
Chapter 4: Results and Discussions 61
entrepreneurial system that was integrated with supportive environment, human
capital and entrepreneurial system would result in creativity and innovation that
contributes to improve entrepreneurial competencies. Fifth, users’ challenge revealed
the experience of members while doing activities in the Foundry such as the lack of
information about the Foundry and members’ profiles, the distraction in the system of
QUT and the physical condition of the Foundry coworking space.
62 Chapter 4: Results and Discussions
Chapter 5: Conclusion 63
Chapter 5: Conclusion
This chapter looks at the three research sub-questions and aims to answer them
by drawing on the results described in Chapter 4. Using an explorative, qualitative
approach, this study enriches our understanding of how university coworking space
and the concept of collaborative learning contribute to support entrepreneurial
processes of coworkers. Collaborative process that occurred in the Foundry and
entrepreneurial activities among its members were discussed, to illustrate a clear
contribution of the university entrepreneurial ecosystem to the Foundry members’
entrepreneurial activities. The following section discusses the relevance of the case
study in the QUT Foundry Coworking Space.
5.1 Response to Research Questions
RQ1: What is the role of university coworking spaces?
In this study, the role of the QUT Foundry coworking space is a place for
connection of stakeholders and a place to introduce entrepreneurship to the community
in the university by providing an entrepreneurial environment that supports learning
activities. In terms of the role of the Foundry, it is to be an entrepreneurial hub in the
QUT entrepreneurial ecosystem, which integrates entrepreneurship education, linkage
to university entities, network to organisations, and uses synergies through
interdisciplinary academic background.
As university coworking space, it is particularly important that spaces support
learning and student engagement and promote active and collaborative learning.
Learning that derives from social interaction is referred to having a space to develop
social networks, participate in active and collaborative learning and access academic
help (Matthews, Andrews, & Adams, 2011). Therefore, university coworking space
should first and foremost be a social learning space, a place where students, researchers
and faculty can interact and learn (Kyrö & Artto, 2015).
As this researcher mentioned in Chapter 4, many elements are involved in the
Foundry and each group of people had different purposes and motivational factors that
64 Chapter 5: Conclusion
influence how people socially interact in the Foundry. QS2 (2019) mentioned that the
Foundry was created to be part of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in QUT to promote the
entrepreneurial activities across the university and tries to co-ordinate with the
different entities that exist on campus. A system was created to balance all elements
to work together on the right paths. It also can be interpreted that the role of university
CWS was not only to provide a space for people to work in but also that QUT has a
complex role and is responsible to nurture and ensure the system works well, such as
by providing entrepreneurs-in-residence, events, seminars, accelerator programs, and
so on, to help the community in conducting entrepreneurial activities.
RQ2: What is the role of collaborative learning at the Foundry coworking space?
In terms of the collaborative learning, this study translated collaborative learning
as an activity where a group of people help each other to improve particular skills
(Ismail, 2017) or work together cooperatively to accomplish shared learning goals (M.
Laal & Ghodsi, 2012). Bouncken (2018) stated that the formation of interdisciplinary
skills, mostly including students from different faculties, can generate innovations and
novel creative processes. In this case, the Foundry has provided the potential of
collaborative learning to generate entrepreneurial activities among members in three
forms: collaborative learning in interdisciplinary skills, social aspects and developing
entrepreneurship and management.
The core skills required in today’s economy are believed to include creativity,
interdisciplinary thinking, problem solving and the ability to collaborate with others
(Bilandzic & Foth, 2013). QS1 stated that the Foundry is a good place for those people
to come together to work and form start-ups that can have an opportunity of succeeding
because the team have a good cross-section of skills. Davidsson (QUTbluebox, 2018)
also stated that interdisciplinary collaborative benefits of filling the gap where there is
a lack of member skills. This indicates that not every member of the team needs to
have all the skills that are useful in entrepreneurship. He also added that successful
entrepreneurs often work in teams and listen to and rely on others’ brainpower. The
role of collaborative learning in a university coworking space can also include
activities that enhance collaboration and community building (Parrino, 2015) with an
emphasis on interaction with other workers (Spinuzzi, 2012) to generate creative ideas
and innovations (Bouncken & Reuschl, 2018).
Chapter 5: Conclusion 65
RQ3: What are the benefits and challenges of collaborative learning for
entrepreneurship at the Foundry?
As mentioned in Chapter 4, the challenges and benefits were discussed by
describing the entrepreneurial journey through the relationship of place, people and
systems. Collaboration among the Foundry members happened organically; people
come together to make connections and greater things happen, in a sense of the
community and to encourage entrepreneurial activities for its member. Entrepreneurs
as individuals often experience very unique and individualistic paths to success.
Overall, place and people are the most dominant in their journey. This needs to
be investigated further, in regard to the members who do not really realise the role of
systems like university, policy, and so on, in supporting their entrepreneurial activities.
In fact, some members reported unsatisfactory experience with the system such as the
difficulties faced to collaborate with the faculty or requesting to provide the prototype
machine. On the one hand, it can be seen that the university needs to consider being
more grounded with coworking members, getting their hopes and opinions across. On
the other hand, it also can be seen that the system presents in the CWS so naturally
that not all members realise it. The new space of Foundry at P block QUT Gardens
Point is one piece of evidence of the support system to encourage more entrepreneurial
activities among coworking members.
The uniqueness of University CWS can provide more opportunity for the users
to have a meeting with academic experts and access to University’s infrastructure
facilities. Without giving more access to users he proximity to the existing university
resources will enhance users’ experiences. The Foundry also needs to consider the
users’ preferences who require quiet room to avoid the distraction.
This finding will hopefully be considered when developing the entrepreneurial
system on campuses. The system should not only be discussed for the members, but
also with the members in a collaborative environment that involves members’
suggestions and opinions.
66 Chapter 5: Conclusion
5.2 Practical Implications
The overall purpose of this study has been to increase our understanding about
the benefits of university coworking spaces, specifically related to the concept of place,
people and systems. Firstly, the study found that the Foundry as a university coworking
space provides an entrepreneurship environment and supports networking that was a
significant part of developing startups. In addition, people consider using the Foundry
as a learning space where entrepreneurial programs and events are conducted to
support entrepreneurial activities. Members also can take benefit through collaboration
amongst members that generate knowledge sharing to fill the gap in members’ skills.
This contributes to understand how the Foundry members’ experience using the place
to create and improve their skills through learning networks and environments.
Secondly, this research contributes to show the many different groups of people
who engaged with the Foundry. The findings show that each group had different roles,
purposes and motivational factors that influence how people interact with the Foundry
and society. The participants reveal their personal experience and with whom they are
interacting, collaborating, and doing social networking. This contributes to understand
that a university coworking space consists of various group of people who can help
each other or facilitate connections to people with similar interests or complementary
skillsets.
Thirdly, university entrepreneurial systems play a vital role in developing
coworking spaces. This study adds to knowledge of how university coworking spaces
could promote entrepreneurship and collaborative learning through supportive systems
such as infrastructure and academic resources, community and culture, and financial
funding capital. These three elements of system are mutually beneficial to support the
entrepreneurial activities of the Foundry members.
The three aspects of place, people and systems provide an entrepreneurial
ecosystem as a starting point to understanding how a university coworking space can
facilitate collaborative learning as well as entrepreneurial activities.
5.3 Limitations
There are several limitations that need to be addressed in future studies. Firstly,
the objective of study was to understand the role of university coworking space in
promoting collaborative learning as well as entrepreneurial activities in the QUT
Chapter 5: Conclusion 67
Foundry Coworking Space. A qualitative study was conducted in order to understand
more about this phenomenon. Nonetheless, the numbers of participants in the study
was considered relatively small by only interviewing eight key informants (three QUT
Foundry staff and five Foundry members). This qualitative study provides in-depth
and rich information about participants’ views. However, the findings cannot be
generalised beyond the research participants.
Secondly, the case study of this study only represents one university coworking
space (the QUT Foundry) in Brisbane, Australia. In 2017, Universities Australia
(Australia, 2017) reported there are eight university coworking spaces in Australia that
provide entrepreneurship programs. For that reason, further studies should gather more
data from other Australian University coworking spaces or public coworking spaces
from different regions and contexts in order to address the generalisability of the
findings. Nevertheless, although this study is an exploratory study, it has provided a
starting point for future research.
5.4 Future Studies
University coworking spaces emerged as a part of the development of
Information and Technology industries. This becomes a trend in universities as part of
entrepreneurial activities of the students. Therefore, university coworking space
research is increasingly evolving; future research in this field looks especially
promising. Due to the number of student coworkers increasing significantly, this
indicates that coworking space has attracted the students to become involves in
entrepreneurial activities. Therefore, future research should pay attention to the
positive and negative impacts of coworking spaces that might affect the study of
students.
Furthermore, the phenomenon of coworking spaces can be approached by
multiple methods. WatersLynch (2018) has suggested using an ethnographic method
by analysing and observing a culture gathered through the long term participation
within a group that focuses on social practices, interactions and the culture of
coworking space. Additionally, future researchers should consider the coworking
space effect on the students’ learning process as well as a mixed-method approach
using the qualitative research method to ensure the elements used in the quantitative
68 Chapter 5: Conclusion
survey are relevant to the study field and to examine in more detail, unexpected results
from a quantitative study.
5.5 Summary
As an entrepreneurial hub in the QUT entrepreneurial ecosystem, the Foundry has
significant roles to integrate entrepreneurship education with the university entities,
network to organisation and provide a space to foster interdisciplinary academic
background for the start-ups. As a learning space for the QUT community,
entrepreneurial programs and events were conducted to support entrepreneurial
activities by collaborating amongst members that result in knowledge sharing to fill
the gaps of members’ skills.
The limitations in this study such as a small number of participants and a mere
representation of one university coworking space (the QUT Foundry) cannot be
generalised beyond the research participants and the Foundry. Nevertheless, it can be
a starting point for future research. Future research also needs to consider ethnographic
method by analysing and observing a culture on the social practices of coworkers, as
well as a mixed-method approach using the qualitative and quantitative method to
support that the elements used in in the quantitative survey are relevant to the study.
References 69
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Appendices 77
Appendices
Appendix A
Interview Questions for The Foundry Members
All:
Tell me about yourself and your role within the Foundry? How long have you
been working/using the space?
Personal Questions:
Entrepreneur in Residence:
How does the foundry facilitate the collaboration?
Does the Foundry have a strategy to facilitate collaboration between the Foundry
and industry?
• If yes, how does the foundry facilitate collaboration between Foundry and
Industry? Can you describe it?
• If no, can you provide explanations/reasoning for this?
Does the Foundry have a strategy to facilitate collaboration between members?
• If yes, how does the Foundry facilitate collaboration between members? Can
you describe it?
• If no, can you provide explanations/reasoning for this?
From your perspective, what are potential outcomes of collaboration for
entrepreneurship?
What would you like to change or improve in the Foundry and the system?
Community Manager:
How does the collaboration between members happen in the Foundry? Have you
seen any evidence of collaboration in the Foundry?
• If yes, can you give me examples?
78 Appendices
• If not, why or what were the potential barriers?
As the manager, how do you encourage Foundry’s members to collaborate?
How do you see learning as an outcome of collaboration?
From your perspective, what are potential outcomes of collaboration for
entrepreneurship? Is there any success story?
What do you think needs to be improved in the Foundry and the system?
Member:
Do you collaborate with others in this space?
• If yes, how often and why? What are the benefits and challenges for you in
collaboration with others?
• If not, why? Do you see potential benefits for yourself to collaborate with others?
From your perspective, what are potential outcomes of collaboration for
entrepreneurship?
What do you think needs to be improved in the Foundry and the system?
80 Appendices
Your participation in this research project is entirely voluntary. If you do agree to
participate you can withdraw from the research project without comment or penalty.
You can withdraw anytime during the interview. If you withdraw with two weeks after
your interview, on request any identifiable information already obtained from you will
be destroyed. Your decision to participate or not participate will in no way impact
upon your current or future relationship with QUT.
EXPECTED BENEFITS
It is expected that this project will not benefit you directly.
However, it may generate a wider benefit to attain better understanding about:
1. The role of university coworking space in promoting and encouraging the
entrepreneurship among the members.
2. The entrepreneurial journey of university CWS members to become entrepreneurs.
RISKS
There are no risks beyond normal day-to-day living associated with your participation
in this project. There might be a remote reputational risk for you in participating in
this research in the case your ideas are misrepresented. To mitigate this risk, you will
be provided with a summary of your data for your approval before final inclusion in
the research dataset.
PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY
All comments and responses will be treated confidentially unless required by law, or
regulatory or monitoring bodies, such as the ethics committee. The names of
individual persons are not required in any of the responses.
As the research project involves an audio recording:
• You will have the opportunity to verify your comments and responses prior to
final inclusion.
• The recording will be destroyed 5 years after the last publication.
• The recording will not be used for any other purpose.
• Only the named researchers will have access to the recording.
• It is not possible to participate in the research project without being recorded.
You can choose to have your comments attributed to you by name, or you can choose
to be cited anonymously. The research project is funded by QUT HDR tuition fee &
Universities PASIM living allowance sponsorship and they will not have access to the
data obtained during the research project.
Any data collected as part of this research project will be stored securely as per QUT’s
Management of research data policy. Please note that non-identifiable data from this
research project may be used as comparative data in future research projects or stored
on an open access database for secondary analysis.
Appendices 81
CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE
We would like to ask you to sign a written consent form (enclosed) to confirm your
agreement to participate.
QUESTIONS / FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE RESEARCH PROJECT
If you have any questions or require further information please contact one of the
listed researchers:
Rizal Rickieno rizal.rickieno@hdr.qut.edu.au
Connie Susilawati c.susilawati@qut.edu.au
Mirko Guaralda m.guaralda@qut.edu.au
CONCERNS / COMPLAINTS REGARDING THE CONDUCT OF THE RESEARCH
PROJECT
QUT is committed to research integrity and the ethical conduct of research projects.
However, if you do have any concerns or complaints about the ethical conduct of the
research project you may contact the QUT Research Ethics Advisory Team on 07 3138
5123 or email humanethics@qut.edu.au. The QUT Research Ethics Advisory Team is
not connected with the research project and can facilitate a resolution to your concern
in an impartial manner.
THANK YOU FOR HELPING WITH THIS RESEARCH PROJECT.
PLEASE KEEP THIS SHEET FOR YOUR INFORMATION.
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