The Coworking Institute: The Home Our Industry Has Been Missing

For more than a decade, GCUC has brought the coworking world together.

We have gathered in rooms around the globe, asked hard questions, shared what works and, just as importantly, shared what did not. Some of the best operator education I have ever witnessed happened in a GCUC hallway, over dinner or during an unconference session that ran well past its allotted time.

But here’s the thing: a conversation is not an institution.

When the conference ends, everyone goes home. The brilliant idea gets buried in a notebook. The answer to an expensive problem stays inside the head of the operator who learned it the hard way. Six months later, someone on the other side of the world asks the same question and starts from zero.

Our industry deserves better.

That is why I am thrilled to announce the launch of The Coworking Institute, created in partnership with GCUC and seasoned coworking entrepreneur Jonathan O’Byrne.

Why We Built It

Coworking has moved from kumbaya to an industry that deserves more.

We are now a global industry touching commercial real estate, hospitality, technology, economic development, and the future of work. We have institutional capital entering the market, landlords building flex strategies, and operators managing increasingly sophisticated businesses.

But the professional infrastructure around the people running those businesses has not kept pace.

Most operators still learn their hardest lessons the expensive way. Pricing, positioning, leases, financial models, technology, community, sales, and legal structures are often figured out in real time, with real money and real livelihoods on the line.

The useful knowledge exists, but it is fragmented. It lives in private messages, spreadsheets, conference recordings, old presentations, and the memories of a relatively small group of experienced operators.

The Coworking Institute is being built as a permanent home for that knowledge. We’re not doing it alone, we’re doing it with our community. 

Not another networking group. Not a folder full of prerecorded webinars. Not a place where vendors pitch operators under the guise of education.

A real professional body for the coworking industry.

Education Built by Operators

The Institute’s education is grounded in a simple principle: competence matters more than attendance.

We are not interested in issuing a certificate because someone watched a collection of videos. The goal is to help people make better decisions inside real coworking businesses and demonstrate that they can apply what they have learned.

The education pathway begins with Foundation, a six-module program for people evaluating the coworking business before they make irreversible decisions. It covers the business model, location and market analysis, positioning, financial modeling, legal structure, and space design for revenue.

For experienced operators, the flagship program is The Coworking MBA, a ten-month, cohort-based program covering the full operation of a business.

The curriculum moves from positioning and demand generation through sales, product strategy, operations, community, technology, corporate structure, financial management, and deal-making. Participants work on their own businesses throughout the program.

The assessments are not academic exercises. They are useful operating assets, including a positioning strategy, rate architecture, financial model, technology plan and deal-readiness pack.

Artificial intelligence will run through the MBA as an applied capability, not a shiny extra module. We will ask where AI actually creates value, where it creates risk, and where a vendor is simply selling nonsense. Participants will learn how to free up time for more valuable human work, build responsible systems, and make better decisions about the technology entering their businesses.

Mental health and leadership will also be present throughout the MBA. We will address the operator’s own well-being, what it means to lead healthy teams, and how to foster healthy communities without building a business that depends on the founder giving until there is nothing left.

This is not a side conversation. It is part of becoming a sustainable leader and building a sustainable company.

The MBA will lead to the Certified Coworking Operator credential, creating a meaningful professional signal for landlords, investors, employers, and the wider industry.

Two Ways for Leaders to Build Real AI Capability

We are also developing shorter Executive Education programs for operators and leadership teams who need to go deep on a specific subject without committing to the full MBA.

The first offerings will focus on artificial intelligence, with two distinct ways to participate.

AI for Leaders: The Briefing

The shorter course is a focused, two-hour executive briefing designed for leaders who need to understand what is changing, what matters, and what they should be doing now.

It will cut through the noise around AI and give participants a grounded understanding of how the technology works, why confident output is not always accurate, and where AI can create meaningful value inside a coworking business.

This is for leaders who want a clear orientation before making larger decisions about tools, data, automation, or organizational adoption. Participants will leave knowing which questions to ask, what to avoid, and where to begin.

The full AI Capability Programme

The longer program is an intensive, seven-module experience built from Pawel Majak’s AI Capability Curriculum and contextualized for the coworking industry.

This is where participants move from understanding AI to building with it.

They will learn how to work with AI effectively, use it to tackle difficult problems, map their personal AI ecosystem, and integrate the tools they already use. They will then build purpose-specific assistants, identify and protect their own intellectual property, deploy AI safely, and create a responsible implementation plan for their organization.

The program will address governance, security, human oversight, data risk, and the leadership decisions that should never be handed over to an automated system.

Participants will finish by presenting and defending the ecosystem and rollout plan they have built. They will leave with a working capability inside their business, not simply a list of tools or a folder of notes.

The short briefing creates clarity. The longer program creates capability.

Both are designed for leaders who want to use AI without losing judgment, responsibility, or the human connection that makes coworking work. Space is limited for this one, so sign up today! 

The AI Subscription…. Coming soon. A monthly cohort to keep you up to speed and riding the wave versus letting it wipe you out. 

Foundations comes to GCUC (Camp GCUC reimagined) 

The Coworking Institute will also lead the next evolution and rebrand of Camp GCUC.

Camp GCUC is becoming Foundations, a one-day intensive at Mindspace in Miami on April 5, 2027, the day before GCUC begins.

Foundations will bring the essential operator curriculum into the room. Aspiring and existing operators will receive practical guidance on the coworking business model, positioning, financial fundamentals, operations, and the hardest-to-reverse decisions.

The day is designed as the perfect entry point to GCUC. Arrive with a stronger foundation, then spend the following days learning from and building relationships with the wider global coworking community.

It connects structured education with everything GCUC does best: honest conversations, meaningful relationships, and access to people who have actually built the businesses we are talking about.

The Shared Knowledge of the Industry

Education is only one piece.

The Institute is also building the Coworking Wiki, an open, structured, and continuously updated knowledge base for the industry.

The Wiki is designed to answer the questions operators are searching for at 11 p.m.: Which software category do I actually need? How do billing and access control connect? What should I understand before choosing a coworking operating system? What terminology is everyone using, and does it mean the same thing in every market?

Alongside it, the Institute is curating an open educational resource library containing the books, research, podcasts, tools, people, organizations and events that have shaped coworking around the world.

Our industry has produced a remarkable body of knowledge. It is time we indexed it, maintained it, and made it easier to use.

Community That Compounds The Learning

I have always believed that coworking is fundamentally about connection.

Running a coworking business, however, can be incredibly isolating. Operators are asked to make complicated decisions about real estate, people, technology, and cash, often without a peer inside their own company who understands the full picture.

Institute membership will provide ongoing professional development, direct access to educators, peer learning, and a private international operator community.

Education gives you a foundation. Community keeps the learning alive.

GCUC will continue to create the rooms where the industry meets, challenges itself and builds relationships. The Coworking Institute will carry that work forward between events. It will turn conversations into curriculum, experience into shared knowledge, and professional development into a year-round practice.

This is not a replacement for GCUC. It is the infrastructure that allows the best of GCUC to keep working after everyone goes home.

Built With The Industry

Jonathan and I may be the founders, but the Institute cannot and should not be built by two people alone.

It is being shaped by operators, educators, and industry builders who have opened spaces, survived mistakes, grown portfolios, negotiated deals, and learned what it actually takes to create a sustainable coworking business.

Some will teach. Some will contribute cases and tools. Some will challenge the curriculum. Some will help us keep the Wiki honest and up to date.

That participation is essential. A professional body earns authority by serving its industry, not simply declaring itself authoritative.

Raise Your Hand

The Coworking Institute is being built for the industry, and we want the industry involved.

If you are interested in a program, want to contribute your expertise, have feedback, or see something we should be doing differently, please fill out the interest and feedback form at coworkinginstitute.com.

Do not wait until everything is finished to tell us what you need. This is the time to help shape it.

If you are ready to join us in person, you can purchase your place at Foundations in Miami through na.gcuc.co.

If you want to begin learning online, explore the AI offerings, register your interest in the Coworking MBA, or purchase an available course, visit coworkinginstitute.com.

Whether you want to learn, teach, contribute, challenge us, or help build what comes next, we want to hear from you.

This Is The Beginning

The coworking movement has never lacked passion, generosity, or ideas.

What it has lacked is a permanent place to turn those qualities into professional knowledge, stronger businesses and shared standards.

That is what we are building with The Coworking Institute.

If you are exploring your first location, operating a single independent space, leading a multi-site portfolio, teaching the next generation of operators, or carrying knowledge the industry needs, there will be a place for you in this work.

Let’s raise the floor for the entire industry, together. 

All the juicy details are here: coworkinginstitute.com 

Listen to our special Podcast on the launch of the institute.