he notion of serendipity is not new to business thinking. The
importance of unexpected conversations and knowledge exchange
in innovation has been noted in the management literature for
many years. What is new is actually building a business –
a machine – that systematically facilitates serendipity.
This book presents a disruptive business model that allows you to do exactly
that. It is based on a study of Seats2meet.com, the Dutch network
of physical coworking, office and meeting spaces.
By reinventing social capital as the currency of network culture and
fusing it with the phenomenon of serendipity, Seats2meet.com has
created a serendipity machine that increasingly looks like an
appropriate platform for value creation in a network economy,
fusing traditional monetary capital with social capital. It has
effectively put into practice something academics have been
feverishly looking for for the last two decades. And the key to it all
is serendipity.
Seats2meet.com has created a business model that provides
a platform for the digital bohemians, knowmads, free agents, or
independent professionals as well as corporate nomads to unleash
their creative powers. By co-creating the infrastructure today’s
creative revolution needs in order to crystallize, Seats2meet.com
has projected itself into the future of capitalism. Creative
revolution has become the company’s business. It can become
yours as well!
Sebastian Olma, PhD, is an international scholar and expert
working at the interface between creativity and economy. Trained
as a philosopher as well as an organizational economist, he helps
companies and organizations to effectively and sustainably make
the most of their innovative potential. He lives in Amsterdam,
where he divides his professional time between running his
consulting company, The Think Tank (thethinktank.nl), and
codirecting the Creative Industries Research Centre Amsterdam at
the University of Amsterdam.
Yulia Kryazheva is an architect and researcher, has worked on
a diverse range of projects in the areas of architecture and urban
renewal, service design and illustration, creative consulting. This
practice gave shape to her current professional domain: design
thinking & visual communication. From her studio, Yulia Ink
(yulia-ink.com) in Rotterdam, she works for clients all over Europe.
B. Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and
management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial
start-ups alike. Mr. Pine co-founded Strategic Horizons LLP,
a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and
design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings.
A prolific writer, in 2011 he updated his best-selling
The Experience Economy (with Jim Gilmore) and co-wrote Infinite
Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier (with
Kim Korn).
Acknowledgments
To collect data for our research, we traveled to many of the
more than 70 Seats2meet.com locations in the Netherlands in
May and June 2012. We would like to take the opportunity to
thank everyone who was kind enough to participate in our
interviews and share their experience of Seats2meet.com with
us – above all, the users of the workspaces, the bookers of the
meeting spaces, the Seats2meet.com entrepreneurs and the
staff. Thanks to Seats2meet.com community manager Vincent
Ariëns for being a great connector! Special thanks go to Ronald
van den Hoff and Mariëlle Sijgers for accommodating all our
research requests and welcoming us into the Seats2meet.com
ecosphere. This was an amazing experience.
Yulia Kryazheva and Sebastian Olma, July/August 2012
importance of unexpected conversations and knowledge exchange
in innovation has been noted in the management literature for
many years. What is new is actually building a business –
a machine – that systematically facilitates serendipity.
This book presents a disruptive business model that allows you to do exactly
that. It is based on a study of Seats2meet.com, the Dutch network
of physical coworking, office and meeting spaces.
By reinventing social capital as the currency of network culture and
fusing it with the phenomenon of serendipity, Seats2meet.com has
created a serendipity machine that increasingly looks like an
appropriate platform for value creation in a network economy,
fusing traditional monetary capital with social capital. It has
effectively put into practice something academics have been
feverishly looking for for the last two decades. And the key to it all
is serendipity.
Seats2meet.com has created a business model that provides
a platform for the digital bohemians, knowmads, free agents, or
independent professionals as well as corporate nomads to unleash
their creative powers. By co-creating the infrastructure today’s
creative revolution needs in order to crystallize, Seats2meet.com
has projected itself into the future of capitalism. Creative
revolution has become the company’s business. It can become
yours as well!
Sebastian Olma, PhD, is an international scholar and expert
working at the interface between creativity and economy. Trained
as a philosopher as well as an organizational economist, he helps
companies and organizations to effectively and sustainably make
the most of their innovative potential. He lives in Amsterdam,
where he divides his professional time between running his
consulting company, The Think Tank (thethinktank.nl), and
codirecting the Creative Industries Research Centre Amsterdam at
the University of Amsterdam.
Yulia Kryazheva is an architect and researcher, has worked on
a diverse range of projects in the areas of architecture and urban
renewal, service design and illustration, creative consulting. This
practice gave shape to her current professional domain: design
thinking & visual communication. From her studio, Yulia Ink
(yulia-ink.com) in Rotterdam, she works for clients all over Europe.
B. Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and
management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial
start-ups alike. Mr. Pine co-founded Strategic Horizons LLP,
a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and
design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings.
A prolific writer, in 2011 he updated his best-selling
The Experience Economy (with Jim Gilmore) and co-wrote Infinite
Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier (with
Kim Korn).
Acknowledgments
To collect data for our research, we traveled to many of the
more than 70 Seats2meet.com locations in the Netherlands in
May and June 2012. We would like to take the opportunity to
thank everyone who was kind enough to participate in our
interviews and share their experience of Seats2meet.com with
us – above all, the users of the workspaces, the bookers of the
meeting spaces, the Seats2meet.com entrepreneurs and the
staff. Thanks to Seats2meet.com community manager Vincent
Ariëns for being a great connector! Special thanks go to Ronald
van den Hoff and Mariëlle Sijgers for accommodating all our
research requests and welcoming us into the Seats2meet.com
ecosphere. This was an amazing experience.
Yulia Kryazheva and Sebastian Olma, July/August 2012
