Bill Kerr: Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host, Bill Kerr. This episode is one of a series of special dispatches on the sweeping effect that Covid-19 is having on society, the economy, and the future of work. In addition to our regular podcast episodes, we’ll be bringing you interviews with business leaders, policy makers, and leading scholars on the coronavirus.

It’s early July 2020, and here in Massachusetts, we’re in the midst of a phased and conditional resumption of business and public life during the coronavirus pandemic. Much attention has been focused on front-line businesses like health care, retail, and hospitality, but co-working and shared innovation spaces are navigating the tricky challenges of welcoming their tenants back safely. CIC—also formerly known as the Cambridge Innovation Center—recently started welcoming tenants back into its refitted and carefully monitored spaces. CIC’s flagship location is in Kendall Square, right beside MIT, and it has eight other locations around the world. Tim Rowe cofounded CIC in 1999, one of the earliest examples of flexible and shared working spaces. A prominent local business and venture leader, Tim has been dubbed the “Mayor of Kendall Square” by MIT’s Tech Review. Covid-19 is not the first challenge CIC has faced. In December 2006, a transformer exploded. It required vacating their main building for one month. They’ve also navigated the Great Recession, believing that both cases help make CIC ultimately stronger. CIC confronts, again, an existential threat in Covid-19. Can a business built on bringing people back into contact with each other survive social distancing and remote work? Tim joins me to discuss what the pandemic means for co-working spaces and the companies that use them. Welcome, Tim.

Tim Rowe: Thank you, Bill, for having me.

Kerr: Tim, CIC is going into its third decade, which is relatively ancient for a new-economy-type company. Tell us about your original business and how that’s evolved up until now.

Rowe: Well, so in the beginning we didn’t really have a business plan. We were, as you know, a bunch of friends from MIT with startups, and we just found it was cheaper to share an office than to have our own. That grew over the years. We’re now in nine locations around the world, and it really has the same spirit. It’s a bunch of entrepreneurs that share a space. We probably are different in that we’re pretty high-end space these days. Our entrepreneurs are well backed, financially. They want things that work, and they expect us to take care of all the complexities. I would say what hasn’t changed is we’re still doing that. What’s changed is that the complexities, themselves, are different.

Kerr: Talk us through some of the complexities that you’re grappling with. And what’s been, from when the pandemic started, what was the real top-of-mind? And as we get into mid-summer, how’s that complexion changing?

Rowe: Well, so when the pandemic started, there was a lot none of us knew. We weren’t sure whether just touching a door knob was going to get you sick, whether it was hanging in the air. So if you went into a space a day after someone sick had been there, would you get sick? Fortunately, a lot of those questions—while not put to rest, because there are still some debates out there—are a lot clearer today. We went through, I think, the same gyrations a lot of well-run organizations did of responding to each possible threat as it was identified. I think we’re now fairly settled down in terms of the things that we need to do to keep people safe.

Kerr: So walk us through maybe the entrance to one of your buildings and the daily life that might ensue. How is it different than what we would have experienced in February of this year?

Rowe: So I think the biggest thing that you’ll see is the social distancing across the board. We’re not public health experts or doctors, but we have spent a lot of time with the best of them and read everything that’s out there. What you’ll see now is a lot more focus on just keeping people a little farther apart from each other. So that’s redesigning physical offices, that’s redesigning flows. If you’re going to go get a cup of coffee, how does that work so that you’re keeping your distance? Like many organizations, we require masks whenever you’re moving around or in common areas. Like many organizations, while you’re seated and social distanced, in most of our jurisdictions and states, you can take your mask off, but not all. That’s a state-by-state thing. There are a few things that are a little more different. In the morning, you’re going to wake up and take your temperature and report that on an app. Anyone working in a large institution where you are going in is familiar with this, because this is becoming pretty de rigueur. And then the newest thing is Covid testing, which we’re just beginning to roll out.

Kerr: So describe the Covid testing for us and how that will change the way that tenants are operating in the building.

Rowe: Well, anyone reading the paper these days knows that Yale University announced that they’re going to be testing every student once a week, and Harvard announced they’re going to be testing every student once every three days. Those, by the way, are the two ends of the spectrum that we’re seeing in responsible well-run organizations that are bringing people onto a campus or into an office environment. We got involved early. We partnered up with Broad Institute, which we believe is the largest lab in the country that’s doing Covid testing. They also have one of the most accurate tests that anyone’s been able to devise. We’re rolling out testing once a week for everyone—and optionally twice a week for companies that want to step up for that.

Kerr: So, Tim, we’ve talked a lot about the redesign of your existing facilities. You’re also in the midst of constructing some new centers. Are we at the point yet that we understand how to design for the Covid future, or is that something that’s still to come?

Rowe: Yes and no. I think there are a few pieces that are going to become clear. I think organizations now understand that their facilities should be touchless. That means you should wave your hand at a button instead of touching that button. You wave your card, and it opens the door for you, that sort of thing. I think responsible organizations are making changes to their facilities that reflect these kinds of basic notions of touchlessness and a desire to create more social distancing in the fundamental design of their buildings. That said, it’s a little early. There are a few organizations that are now starting new construction projects today. I think that we’ll have a gestation period over the next three to six months, as some of these new ideas get internalized by the design and construction communities. And then I think you’ll see facilities that long term are better prepared in certainly pandemics, but also for everyday hygienic issues like the flu.

Kerr: Tim, you have both—obviously tenants that have been in your buildings for 10 years, 15 years, and then also the prospects for new tenants. Is the conversation similar across the two groups in terms of the concerns here, or does the traditional business that’s been up and running for a while have a different set of key touchpoints or worries, compared to a brand new possible tenant?

Rowe: I would say that there are more commonalities than differences—that the commonalities are that everyone initially said, “Look, people should work from home,” which I think was a responsible reaction. Businesses then divided down as to whether they had a business need for people to be coming in. So for instance, in Philadelphia, we have our largest wet laboratory facilities. They’re shared wet labs for startups doing life science research. And we’ve seen relatively little drop in those coming into the office in Philadelphia, because many of them do have this wet lab use. So I’d say the differences are more along the lines of the specific type of business that’s involved and whether there’s a need for them to be coming in.

Kerr: One of the things you very carefully orchestrated over the last 10, 15 years has been the ecosystem that sits inside of your buildings. For those that have not experienced CIC before, there’s service providers into the companies, there’s financiers, there’s the technologists that are coming from nearby universities, then there’s the entrepreneurs, and there’s also the corporate labs that some of the large companies have in place. Do you anticipate it being challenging to have that ecosystem in the balance that you’ve had in times past, or are certain types going to move away more than others?

Rowe: Absolutely. The level of interaction that we had pre-Covid of just people constantly talking with each other, sharing ideas and so forth, that is way down. The in-person contact just isn’t there at the same level. There’s a piece here, which is interesting. We’re seeing, particularly millennial or younger employees are getting a bit stir-crazy at home. There’s something about just seeing another human being that is not maybe someone that lives in your home with you. We are seeing more and more people, particularly the younger people, saying, “Hey, I would like to be going to the office.” I think they’re looking for a connection, but it really isn’t at that same level that you would see in an intense innovation community, pre-Covid. What is happening is that the previous in-person social gatherings, networking events, and so forth have moved over online and, somewhat to our surprise, the attendance numbers are actually higher than they used to be in person.

Kerr: Maybe tell us a little bit about Venture Café and how that has transferred over—those that have not heard, this would be one of the premier key events every week in the Boston startup community—and how that now looks in a virtual world.

Rowe: Yeah. So we have weekly gatherings at CIC called “Venture Café.” They’re not just open to people who work at CIC. They’re open to the entire city in which we’re in. Think of them as a TEDx Conference that happens once a week. People generally go online. If you go to venturecafeglobal.org, you’ll see the global list of these all over the world. You can find those that are in your city. We’re in, I think, 11 or 12 cities at this point. You will see the kinds of conversations that you might’ve seen at a TEDx Conference, but they’re at a much higher rhythm. We’re now at the point that the attendance for Venture Café is about twice that of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference. But taking into account that it’s every week, and it’s in 12 cities, each individual gathering is much smaller. These gatherings have actually grown in attendance since Covid started.

Kerr: Tell us about the format, Tim. The Venture Café was a bit of hanging around, getting some beer. There was a lot of mingling, find your name, here’s a name badge, and so forth. How do you manage that in the Zoom or other platform world that you’re using right now?

Rowe: So that actually still happens. There are a number of great tools out there, in addition to Zoom, that allow you to interact in a more social way. What happens is, you do attend, say, a session or a talk or a panel like you might usually. But then afterwards, you can be invited to a smaller group discussion sometimes with the panelists, but maybe there’s only five or 10 people. As you know, Zoom has a feature to break out into breakout groups, and so the organizers will do that. You’ll find yourself in a room with five or six people that you don’t know, much as you might as you’re waiting in line to get a beer.

Kerr: Do you anticipate keeping some of these innovations after—hopefully in the near future—Covid ends and we’re able to do a lot more in-person events again? And maybe more broadly, has necessity been the mother invention here, that other innovations where you said, “Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”

Rowe: I think this will be one of the big ones, the move to also having a digital track for our social gatherings and our entrepreneur mixers. The first one I attended was in Philadelphia—or was virtually in Philadelphia. There were several people in the group. I was a speaker, and I asked them, while we were waiting to get going, what their background was, whether they’d come to the in-person. Two people, both happened to be African-American, said that they had not attended the in-person before, that they lived near our facility and wanted to go, but “hadn’t been able to organize their lives to get there,” and that going digital made it possible for them to participate. That warmed my heart. I think we’re going to see, going forward, when the in-person comes back, we’re going to try to have every event both have a simultaneous digital and in-person dimension. That’s one of the big differences. But I would say across the board, many of the things that we’re doing, we’re saying to ourselves that this is better. More people actually die from the flu every year than people realize, right? If you’re below age 50 or so, I think even today, you may have been more likely to die of the flu last year than Covid this year. The numbers are surprising. So just our efforts to make the spaces more hygienic, I think, will pay dividends long term.

Kerr: Tim, maybe we can broaden from here. You’re someone who’s very much in touch with the startup ecosystem in Boston, as well as the other communities that you’re serving here. Perhaps as a starting question, you hear a lot about Covid-19 accelerating various future of work trends—automation being one of the main ones, moves toward gig work, and contingent type of arrangements. Do you see that as happening among the CIC clientele? If so, how does that change some of your plans to help serve them?

Rowe: Well, so first of all, I think that those shifts probably already took place faster and sooner in the startup community before Covid and maybe are now just arriving at corporate America. If you were in an innovation environment, the number of companies that are using, say, crowdsource services for a variety of things was enormous. That’s how you did business. So I think perhaps there’s been some acceleration, but maybe more of a mainstreaming of some of the things that we already saw in the startup community. What these changes produce is that large organizations are becoming more atomized, if you will. Instead of one monolithic company with one giant building somewhere in the suburbs, that’s really 300 little teams, right? Some of those teams may no longer be employees or may no longer need to, if they are employees, may no longer need to be in the headquarters with everybody else. We think this will drive a shift toward more-flexible team gatherings. There’s a flight to flexibility that’s occurring right now. In the United States, with the state we are in Covid, still many people are working from home. In other countries that are a bit past it, they’re seeing significantly more demand for these kinds of small, flexible office spaces than there was before Covid.

Kerr: That portends toward the future a quite promising new business franchise. One of the things we’re also seeing with many startups right now is the questions about cash flow and credit crunches, and trying to survive dips and downturns. From your on-the-ground perspective, how well are the local ecosystems holding up? And if this lasts for further into the fall, do you anticipate evermore challenges for the businesses that are the younger companies?

Rowe: Yeah. I think we’re all unable to really forecast what Covid means for the economy, right? We don’t know whether there’ll be second spikes that will have further lingering effects. I think most organizations are preparing for uncertainty. That means that they’re doing things that they think will be Covid-resistant—businesses that make sense in a post-Covid or during-Covid environment—more things than they might have otherwise. I think at the same time that all this is happening, this is not really like a traditional recession. There is an enormous amount of work getting done. When I talk to our clients at CIC, they say, “We’re getting a surprising amount done. We’re moving forward. We’re not seeing some tectonic shift.” Now maybe that will come when we get to November, December, if things are still tough. But we haven’t seen that yet.

Kerr: Tim, as you’ve been expanding CIC from its original location in Kendall Square outwards, you’ve always had a premium from finding that right spot in a new city. For those that aren’t aware, in the Boston area CIC is right next to MIT in Kendall Square. This is some of the priciest real estate, probably the priciest real estate, in all of New England that we’re dealing with here. Do you anticipate that level of premium on place for the years ahead, or will this shifting of remote work and some of the more flexible team arrangements, do you anticipate, maybe it distributes it back out a little bit more through cities? And how would that affect where your ninth or tenth location will be selected?

Rowe: So there is a subset of people for whom the connection with others is very important. It may be a small fraction of the overall workforce, but that fraction puts an incredible premium on these contacts. If you’re in business development, if you’re trying to sell a new concept or a new product, the relationships you have are everything. So we don’t see a diminishment in the need to be physically in-person—a place where you can build human relationships—in this small subset of people who need that high level of contact. I do believe that in the larger real estate world, where people might have been driving to a big facility off a highway, that organizations are going to be rethinking that. If your work does not require you to have a high degree of contact with other people, I think there may be a different way that work is structured.

Kerr: Okay. So there could even be a counterintuitive result there—that, if you’re prioritizing the places for those that need to have the highest degree of contact, there could be less in some of the more remote places that are out there.

Rowe: I think that’s right. I think people are very happy to be ... I just got off the phone with a senior executive at one of the top tech companies. And he has spent the last six weeks in Maine and plans to be there indefinitely in a seaside home. He says he’s getting more done than he’s ever gotten done in his career. He’s working very hard, but he’s just not commuting and flying around the country. So I think that that will be an element. I think, at the same time, that there’s going to be this thirst for spending some time in the commons, if you will. You’ve got to build the relationships that allow you to be productive that way. So we don’t quite know what it will look like, but we think there will be an intensely social core once we’re past the health concerns with that, and then perhaps a more distributed day-to-day.

Kerr: That life in Maine sounds great. Tim, one of the things you have long been seeking to do across your global locations—and the number continues to grow—is actually link the facilities together. So make it more than just the Kendall Square CIC, but the connections to those that you have in Providence and in Europe and in Asia and elsewhere. Can this move toward remote work and making the Venture Café more virtual? Do you see that as a way of accelerating the connections you can deliver across the facility?

Rowe: So it’s funny you should say that. I think, surprisingly, even for a small organization like ourselves, our global team of professionals that are solving global problems are already distributed everywhere. I think what you’re finding is, when you’re looking for a new coder or a marketing professional—you name it—the really good talent is wherever it is, and you adapt to where the talent is, right? It’s a different thinking than once when maybe you said, “Gee, I’m in Boston, so I’ll definitely hire someone in Boston for this role.” So one thing that we are seeing is that our clients are putting employees in multiple sites around the world. They see some value in having those folks on a common platform. We’re seeing more of that. Even within our own organizations, we have core global teams distributed all around the world. So will more of that happen? Yes. There’s a fun notion that I’ve heard batted about. You know that many people now are not taking traditional vacations and yet are getting a little stir-crazy. I’ve heard people talking about relocating for periods of time, just to another city, because they want some newness in their lives. We are expecting people to say, “We’ve got Boston employees. We have a Miami facility. They can relocate to Miami for a few months.” That won’t happen today in the middle of the spike, but we’re thinking that that will pick up as the health concerns die out.

Kerr: It’s also fascinating to go in the opposite direction of, if it’s about to spike in a location or a place becomes at risk, maybe some people want to move to another CIC location and have the flexibility there.

Rowe: Well, we’re ready as people choose to do that. There’s one other idea that we’re kicking around. There’s a term used in Japan called “kanzume,” which technically means “canning” or “canned foods,” but it’s used for when somebody self-isolates for a period of time to get a task done. The concept is to invite people to come in for, say, three, four days of intense work to a CIC facility, shut out the world—you know we’re going to manage that safely. We’re testing. We’ve got all the right high-tech Covid safety precautions—and just really heads down quietly get a task done. Maybe writing a book or an article. This is something that we think could be a fun new thing that comes out of all this.

Kerr: Tim, maybe a last question is perhaps the hardest question and may take a little bit to unfold here is, what’s the timeframe? You mentioned earlier, no one knows how Covid is affecting, really, the economy and what’s the prospects there. I know being in a university right now, there’s some struggle about what part of this is short term, and so we need some stop-gap measure versus what part of this is, it’s going to be here for five years and so we better go ahead and start making the investments in order to have the better facility or the new flow pattern. Where are you in thinking about that for the CIC facilities? And what’s the triggers or the things that you’re looking for coming up that would lead you to make even further decisions?

Rowe: So the way we look at it, the most responsible organizations—and I mentioned Harvard and Yale, and there are many others that have really said, “Look, we want to get people back. We want them to be doing many of the things they were doing before and to do it safely.” We’ve concluded that actually frequent Covid testing is the key to that. If the testing evolves as we think it will, it will get very cheap, down to as little as maybe $5 a test, something that you get a 15-minute result in. There are several companies we’re talking with that have that in the labs right now. We think that the key will be to build organizations that have taken all the precautions, really thought it through, and built the structures so that you know that everyone around you has actually been tested and are working in a way that will keep everybody well. Once you do that, I think you create an opportunity for a restart. This won’t be needed for every organization. Many organizations are happy to continue working from home. But for those who need to get back to work—whether it’s because they do use laboratories or their work requires in-person connection—our plan is to be that place, that best-in-class place, that you can be doing traditional work in-person, and to do that over the next 24 months while the rest of the world continues to be dealing with a lot of uncertainty.

Kerr: It sounds like it’s not just about delivering the safe environment, but it’s also showing or having very visible, noticeable signs that this is a safe place, where you can trust the environment that surrounds you.

Rowe: Exactly. It’s about building a genuinely safe environment that is trusted, where you can see how that’s done, and you understand the science of it. That is our forte. And that’s what CIC is doing.

Kerr: Well thanks, Tim, for joining us. Tim Rowe is the founder and CEO of CIC, formerly known as the Cambridge Innovation Center. They have facilities in eight cities around the world. We appreciate him telling us about how the innovation space is evolving and some of the things that they’re doing to stay in front of Covid-19. Thanks, Tim.

Rowe: Thank you very much, Bill.

Kerr: Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Managing the Future of Work podcast. To find out more information about our project on the future of work and for more information on the coronavirus’s impact, visit our website at hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work and sign up for our newsletter.