Workspaces for entrepreneurs: conceptualizing openness in new workspaces as clopen office provision

Drawing on 40 interviews with owner-managers and eight enterprise hub managers, this study critically assesses the workspace preferences, motivations, and experiences of enterprise hub tenants. This provides a means to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of four types of entrepreneurial workspaces (home-based, conventional rented office space, enterprise hub, and coworking spaces), which differ in terms of their degree of openness. The paper contributes through an identification of the limitations of binary ‘open or closed’ equals ‘good or bad’ judgements of entrepreneurial workspaces, rather recognizing that the diverse multitasking that is inevitably involved in running a small business means that no single, fixed physical layout is optimal for all tasks. Moreover, the paper contributes to the literature on New Working Spaces, offering practical recommendations for the design of entrepreneurial workspaces, arguing that they should be informed by the ‘clopen’ principle—flexibly combining ‘open’ elements such as coworking spaces, shared kitchens, networking groups and breakout rooms/spaces, with ‘closed’ dedicated space for rent. The paper highlights how enterprise hubs can exemplify the clopen principle in practice, offering entrepreneurs a ‘goldilocks’ optimum combining the advantages of both open and closed workspaces.