Having close associates is a great thing, of course, but King and Ockels explain that those we know less well offer different but also important benefits:

Weak ties generally connect people who move in different social or business circles. Because of this, they tend to have different information sets – things you don’t already know, or aren’t aware of, or new ways of looking at things.

It’s not that strong ties (close friends, business associates, etc.) aren’t good at providing information. They are. But because they are strong ties, you are likely to already know much of what your regular social network knows. You are also likely to share similar points of view and approach things in similar ways.

Or in other words, by cultivating weak ties you expose yourself to novel ideas and information. Can coworking help you get more? Emergent recently interviewed nearly 100 members of U.S. coworking spaces to find out. They concluded that, “coworking members tend to see an increase in the size and usefulness of their weak tie business networks.”

Why is this? The full post offers a lengthy explanation and is well work a read in full, but basically coworking encourages the development of profitable weak ties by providing opportunities to socialize more broadly, enabling members to locate and tap their weak ties when desired, and deputizing a community manager to nurture members’ relationships.

Of course, all of this is fancy way of saying that meeting new people broadens your horizons and teaches you things – and coworking helps you meet people who aren’t friends of friends of colleagues of colleagues (and thus more likely to be similar to you). It’s hardly earth shattering news, but nonetheless it’s easy to forget the importance of not sinking into a social rut and helpful to be reminded of what you’re missing out on when you do so.

Are you guilty of getting complacent about branching out more widely with your social network?

Image courtesy of Flickr user The Shane H.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

Don Ball, co-founder of the CoCo coworking and collaborative space said that many of the early corporate users of his facilities were “going rogue,” with supervisors not actually knowing that employees were working in a shared office space.

But these days, more and more corporations are leveraging coworking spaces, with motivations ranging all the way from real estate downsizing to perks to increased productivity. “When I worked in an office, I spent an awful lot of time to fool around,” said Emergent Research Partner Steve King. Offices tend to be social spaces with lots of parties and other non-work activities, something that doesn’t happen as much in coworking facilities.

At coworking spaces, people tend to be more focused, agreed Herman Miller Advanced R&D Projects Lead Consultant Jennifer Magnolfi. “These spaces simply feel more appropriate for the way we work today,” she said, simply because they reflect the tools we use to work today. She added than many coworking spaces follow different design paradigms than your plain old office, inviting people to learn as well as work.

So how big is the impact this new wave of corporate coworking is having? King said that nine percent of the people who attend coworking spaces in the U.S. now come from corporations that employ more than 100 people. That may not sound much, but LiquidSpace Founder and CEO Mark Gilbreath reminded the Net:Work audience that coworking is already influencing how big corporations design their offices. It might be that the coworking space of the future doesn’t even look like today’s coworking facility, where people rent desk space by time slot. “Hotels have spent 3 billion dollars to redesign their lobbies to feel like coworking spaces,” he said.

Regardless of what coworking spaces will eventually look like, all of the participants agreed that the trend will play a huge role for big companies in the years to come. “Coworking is a window into the future of work,” said King.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How emerging technologies will influence collaboration
• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce