We examine how a collective workspace hosting entrepreneurs may influence their practices and sustain the development of their ventures. We use the conception of space as a social process introduced by Hall (1966) and combine the perspective of entrepreneurs who located their business in such a workspace with that of the designers. We conducted a qualitative and inductive case analysis of a coworking space for social entrepreneurs in Paris. We propose a model differentiating three components: physical place – mode of operation – hosted population and show how these components jointly contribute to the development of collaborative relations and facilitate access to external resources for the companies located in such a workspace.
