Open creative labs: Spatial settings at the intersection of communities and organizations

Abstract

This paper explores the relation between the notion of “communities” and the emergence of new spatial settings for innovation and creativity that we subsume under the term ‘open creative labs’. The paper starts by observing the omnipresence of the term community in both, self‐descriptions of coworking spaces, fab labs, etc., and first scientific publications on these spatial phenomena. However, attempts to conceptualize the relation between communities and these new spatial settings are still rare. This paper assumes that this gap can be addressed by adding the relation between organizations and communities to the conceptual debate. Therefore, this paper first presents a brief literature review on different forms of community–organization relations. Here, communities are regarded as entities that may exist within organizations, as alternative structures to organizations, as substitutes for organizations or as intermediaries between individuals and organizations. Second, we take a fresh look at an empirical data set on open creative labs in Berlin. We present a taxonomy of four lab types (experimentation labs, working labs, open innovation labs, and investor‐driven labs) and explore differences in terms of their community orientation and objectives. Thus, this paper sets out to contribute to conceptualizing the relation of communities and space.