Along with my friend and colleague, Jose Castillo, who runs the SparkPlaza co-working space, I'm going to be part of a "debate" on the merits of co-working versus incubation for those businesses that want to move from the spare bedroom to the boardroom.
The event, held in conjunction with the Northeast Tennessee Technology Council, debuts at SparkPlaza in Johnson City, TN, from 8:00-9:30 AM on 23 November 2009. It's also been added to the LaunchPin calendar.
A potential list of topics / questions, comparing supervised growth vs organic growth (the two basic tenets of entrepreneurial growth, here are the topic points:
1. Why do entrepreneurs move from their spare bedroom to a co-working or incubation facility?
2. What services are provided by each (tactical, such as copier, fax, phones, internet; strategic such as small business advice, mentoring)?
3. How big can one scale a company inside each?
4. What does "graduation" from a co-working space and from an incubation space?
5. What equity stake does the co-working or incubation group take in the companies that are part of each facility? In other words, is co-working peer-to-peer or are some peers more equal than others?
We've also decided to add two guest debaters to help tag-team two topics of great interest:
First, Yvette Fragile, formerly with Knoxville News-Sentinel and now with iShoptheTri.com, will help Jose and Tim make sense of the the roles of social and traditional media in business startup marketing. Second, Rayford Johnson from the ETSU innovation lab will help expand the incubation / co-working debate when we look at for-profit versus not-for-profit incubation.
Look forward to seeing you there, if you're in the area and can make it.
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