university coworking space s collaborative ......university coworking space as a collaborative...

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 4.10 FM4 Entrepreneurial Journey Diagram .................................................. 55



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


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


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


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


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


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?


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.


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


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


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


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


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,


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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.


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.


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.


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.

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



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


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).


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


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,


“… 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


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.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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.


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



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



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.



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



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


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


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,


“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


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.

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).


RQ3: What are the benefits and challenges of collaborative learning for


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.


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


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


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.

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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?


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?


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 [email protected]

Connie Susilawati [email protected]

Mirko Guaralda [email protected]

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 [email protected]. 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.