The WeWork story is so bizarre we can’t even get outraged about it
Ok, I&#x27;m done talking about WeWork from a business perspective. Let&#x27;s move on to something more interesting. One of the things that I think we need to start thinking about is the concept of implied preference.<p>Until now, co-working spaces have been open-plan, with large amounts of glass and no sound-deadening. All of these features are things that we all assumed were a revolution. WeWork had all these things, WeWork was hugely successful, so we had our revealed preference. No matter what you might say, it turns out you want to work in a noisy office with no privacy and free craft beer.<p>I&#x27;ve heard no end of people who <i>personally</i> dislike that, yet it&#x27;s the standard that every &#x27;successful&#x27; coworking space has. I&#x27;d like to consider the idea that all of these things are actually (contrary to popular opinion) <i>terrible</i> and the reason people were putting up with them was because WeWork was selling office space for 50 cents on the dollar.<p>The result we&#x27;ve seen in the market, is obviously you and I can&#x27;t go out and sell office space for 50 cents on the dollar. So instead we follow the signalling- we all start companies renting out glass offices with no sound-deadening and craft beer. We&#x27;re optimising for the wrong thing. We&#x27;re looking at WeWork thinking they revolutionized the experience, but actually they didn&#x27;t.<p>So what does this all mean? Well what if the companies that are trying to compete with WeWork catch on to the truth behind this. Start breaking up the spaces for more privacy, more quiet space, less craft beer and more productivity. If people take the right lesson from this we could end up with spaces that are actually optimized to what office workers want, rather than forcing everyone to work in the equivalent of a busy starbucks simply because that&#x27;s what we learned from WeWork.