This article is based on the Allwork.Space Future of Work Podcast episode “Jessica Knapp on Coworking, Agility & AI | Future of Work Podcast.” Watch or listen to the full episode.
Flexible workspace operators have more ways than ever to attract customers. They can offer wellness services, premium amenities, hospitality, community programming and increasingly sophisticated technology. But adding more isn’t necessarily the answer.
For Jessica Knapp, VP of Growth at WorkSpace Geek and a longtime flexible workspace and SaaS executive, the operators best positioned for growth will be the ones that understand what their customers already value and build around it.
Knapp joined us on our The Future of Work® Podcast to discuss the changing coworking market, bringing experience from both the operator and technology sides of the industry. She was also an early employee at OfficeRnD and has held multiple CEO roles in SaaS.
Her central advice to operators is straightforward: look at the data, understand what is working, and amplify it.
The Flex Customer Is Getting Bigger
Coworking’s customer base is expanding beyond freelancers, startups and small businesses. Knapp pointed to growing interest from large companies that need workspace for distributed employees. A company with remote workers across the U.S., for example, can place employees into different types of flex spaces depending on where they live and what they need.
That flexibility is one of the industry’s biggest advantages. A national operator can serve employees in major cities, while local operators can provide a workspace closer to workers in smaller markets. The result is a market where a single corporate customer does not necessarily need one office for everyone.
The Secondary Market Opportunity
That model also creates an opportunity outside major business centers. Knapp sees continued growth in secondary and more localized markets, where remote workers can find workspace closer to home. For employees who would otherwise face a lengthy commute to a central office, a nearby coworking space can provide the social and professional benefits of working around other people without recreating the commute.
She sees coworking as part of a larger demand for proximity, community and more control over how people structure their working lives.
More Amenities Can Create a Bigger Problem
The growing variety of flex spaces has opened the door to everything from wellness services to specialized food and fitness offerings. Knapp sees plenty of value in that experimentation, but warns operators against adding amenities simply because they sound appealing.
Her concern is what she calls “amenities gone wild”: businesses continually adding services without establishing whether their customers actually want them or whether the economics work. The better approach, she argues, is to listen for recurring customer requests and use that information before investing.
That can mean choosing smaller changes with a meaningful impact rather than loading a space with expensive features that do little to improve the member experience.
AI Could Give Operators More Time for People
Technology could help solve another longstanding problem: the amount of administrative work required to run a flex space.
Knapp recalled that onboarding a new member once took her team more than an hour because so many processes were handled through disconnected systems.
Modern automation can handle tasks such as billing, tour bookings and lead follow-up, potentially reducing the administrative workload for operators.
That matters because flex workspace still depends heavily on human interaction. As more operational tasks become automated, Knapp expects operators to have more capacity for community-building, programming and the in-person experiences that differentiate physical workspace.
She also sees a likely split in the market. Some operators may pursue lightly staffed or unstaffed models to control costs, while others will invest heavily in hospitality and human experiences.
Coworking’s Network Is Still Underused
Knapp also sees an opportunity in coworking’s collective purchasing power. Operators and members represent a large concentration of businesses and workers, yet she believes the industry has not fully capitalized on its network effect.
That network can create opportunities for shared purchasing, business services and connections between companies operating from different spaces. For operators, the opportunity extends beyond filling desks. A strong community can become an economic asset in its own right.
Start With What Works
Knapp’s advice for operators comes back to the same principle: understand the business before trying to reinvent it. Instead of immediately focusing on what is underperforming, she encourages operators to examine the parts of the business that are already succeeding and find ways to expand them.
That could mean changing how space is allocated, adjusting a room’s purpose or investing more heavily in a service customers already use. For an industry operating on relatively narrow margins, that kind of agility can matter more than constantly adding something new.
As corporate demand for flexible workspace grows and technology takes on more administrative work, the opportunity may be less about building the most elaborate workspace and more about building a smarter one.
