Beyond Garage: Role of Spaces in Business Startups

There is an enduring myth that many technological innovations have come out of garages, bedrooms and basements.

One of the most famous garages is the one at Steve Jobs' parents' house where he was rumoured to have designed the Apple I computer , along with Steve Wozniak and some colleagues. The myth was so persistent, that the garage was designated as a site of historical importance in 2013 . It was a similar story for the founders of Google, who set up their first offices in an actual garage in Menlo Park in San Jose, Calif.

Then there was William Hewlett and David Packard, who developed a low-distortion frequency oscillator in their garage in Palo Alto, before going on to found the information technology company HP Inc. One of their first customers was Walt Disney, who used it for the sound in his 1940 film Fantasia .

The garage is an important site in the founding myths of many entrepreneurial adventures. Before a company becomes successful, where it starts out is as important as the visionaries who invest in it. And in addition to the specific space of the garage, the surrounding urban environment is also important. What a city offers, and the way it is organized, both contribute to innovation.

This article is part of our series Our cities from yesterday to tomorrow. Urban life is going through many transformations, each with cultural, economic, social - and, in this election year, political - implications. To shed light on these diverse issues, The Conversation Canada is inviting researchers to discuss the current state of our cities .

Multiplicity of creative spaces

There are many spaces specifically designed to support entrepreneurship today, including incubators, accelerators and collaborative workspaces. In addition to providing a place to work, these spaces facilitate both networking with potential partners and access to business opportunities.

It is also interesting to note how these creative spaces have multiplied in most cities, sometimes with a specialization. They can be found in the fields of health , social innovation and digital technologies .

Yet, as important as they may be for some players, these spaces are not the only factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success. Other places, sometimes unexpected, such as the fast food restaurant where Nvidia was born or the Californian saunas that have replaced luxury hotels for business meetings between investors and entrepreneurs, also contribute to the creation and development of new companies. Nor can the success of an entrepreneurial venture be explained by a single place.

That raises the question: what do we know about how cities, and the variety of places within them, affect the development of entrepreneurial capacity?

As a postdoctoral researcher at HEC Montréal (MOSAIC) and a professor of innovation management at the IAE Nantes University, respectively, we have explored this question as part of our research in innovation management, particularly in a recent piece of research .

The city, an ecosystem

Research has long focused on specific types of places . The aim is both to understand what happens there and to extract lessons that can be replicated elsewhere. Accessing a shared workspace offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to socialize . This was also the great promise of the American company WeWork: to be a member of a community.

Specific technologies or tools for prototyping can be found in a fab lab or a collaborative manufacturing workshop. Presenting your project to investors is easier from an incubator or accelerator. For example, by presenting a project at Y-Combinator in California, an accelerator renowned for supporting promising projects, entrepreneurs know they'll get noticed by investors.

Similarly, it is easier to meet potential partners or pick up on the latest trends in a market or technologies by spending the evening in a trendy café or bar. Informal exchanges are easier there and these play a big role in the entrepreneurial dynamics of a territory .

And then, quite simply, where does the initial idea come from? As the American columnist and writer Steven Johnson shows through the examples of Gutenberg and Darwin, it is clear this often happens at odd times and in unusual places.

As a result, whether innovators are entrepreneurs, artists or scientists, it is unlikely that all the resources they require will be available to everyone, all the time, in one place.

As the American urban planner and sociologist Jane Jacobs so aptly put it, individuals experience the city. They do not got to a single place: they visit or pass by a variety of places, each of which, in its own way, can nurture the creativity and career of an entrepreneur. Our research reveals that it is above all the combination of a city's places - their diversity of size, function, purpose and location - that produces entrepreneurial capacity.

Observing artists to better understand entrepreneurship

Let's take the example of creators who produce projection mapping works in Montréal. Thanks to a six-month survey of 21 Montréal artists , we were able to show the heterogeneity of places they visited regularly throughout the process of creation and development.

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Our study led to two main conclusions.

Firstly, depending on the profile of individuals and their creative approach, the places they visit regularly are different, and sometimes distinctive. This is the case, for example, of an artist who benefits from a residency in a printing workshop to create a projection on fabrics. It is also the case of a designer who goes to a fab lab to experiment with sensors.

This suggests that there are specific trajectories for each individual, and therefore, no single path that leads to innovation.

The need for structuring places

Secondly, this observation suggests that the convergence around certain places does not owe to chance: multiple resources, sometimes crucial for recognition in a field, are mobilized there.

For example, many of the artists in our study regularly visited Montréal's Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), a renowned meeting place that has helped the careers of many artists . The artists we met go there to take courses, attend shows, and meet musicians with whom they may eventually collaborate.

That's how a venue's reputation is built. As we have shown , this can become essential at a particular stage of the entrepreneur's journey.

But before or after this stage, other places may be more beneficial.

In fact, depending on the phase of the innovation project, the types of places visited and their number vary greatly. So, since needs are different, the capacity to innovate depends on the places and possibilities that exist in a city. For example, Montréal's diverse cultural offerings, with its artist-run centres and performance halls, strongly inspire projection mapping artists.

Workshops are obviously important places for experimentation and creation, but they are only used when a prototype or final work is being produced.

The territory of innovation

In a more global context, where there are many technological, societal and environmental challenges, innovations are necessary.

Ideas and entrepreneurs are essential to make innovation happen. Entrepreneurs need skills and financial resources. They need to be part of collectives and communities. But also, and perhaps even above all, they need to be in territories that offer a wide range of places where they can take advantage of complementary resources to carry out their projects.

The city as a whole, and on a smaller scale, its neighbourhoods, are the melting pot from which ideas circulate and mix, where projects mature and take shape. The urban morphology, which can be seen as a particular arrangement of places and transport or travel infrastructures, then becomes a new deciding factor in entrepreneurial capacity.

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.