Spearheaded by Uber and AirBnB, the sharing economy is innovating the way people consume products and services. Slowly but surely, it’s also changing the market of office spaces around the world.

According to Investopedia, the Sharing Economy is an economic model that allows consumers to rent assets owned by a private individual and is most likely used when the cost of a particular asset is high but isn’t fully utilized all the time.

In retrospect, people have shared items with other people long before. We shared clothing with our family members, shared cars with friends and even unused equipment. And today’s technology – with the help of the internet – have created a bridge between the people who want to share their unutilized assets and the individuals who are looking for people willing to share it with them.

AirBnB allowed homeowners to rent out vacant bedroom and homes to strangers and Uber allowed drivers to share rides with other people. And as people start to see the opportunity to make profit out of sharing, the market grew.

Around the world, people share spaces for car park, for storage and even for planting – all of which made possible by today’s technology and the growing knack to save money. It wasn’t long until the commercial real estate industry thought that its time join the sharing phenomena.

However, there’s more it than it seems. Brokers aren’t just jumping into sharing economies for no reason. Social and economic trends came into play. Now, companies are reshaping the ideas of modern office.

Experts believed that the traditional offices began to fade when spaces per work started to shrink. Space allocation dropped from 125 feet per worker to 50 feet over the last decade. Moreover, it was a global phenomenon happening from Asia to Europe.

In addition to this, the financial pressure are driving companies to look for cheaper offices with flexible workspaces. Experts have argued that the global recession that took place during the 2008 diminished cheap rent. Businesses couldn’t afford the idle capacity brought by large-scale office buildings.

Another factor behind the demand of shared spaces is the increasing number of remote workers. The premise of telecommunicating first came to the industry during the year of 1973 and with the advancement of today’s technologies, flexible ways of working have become popular.

As the number of self-employed professionals and digital nomads rose and the commodity of business operations evolved, a demand for cheap and flexible offices came to be.

The idea of flexible workspaces was brought to life by serviced offices – now widely known as shared offices or executive suites. Companies started to lease large offices and dividing them into smaller offices. Furnishing it with desks, meeting rooms and all the facilities and equipment needed in a conventional office, they started renting these spaces out to different companies.

Later on, hosted services entered the market with a similar layout as serviced offices while providing back office functions such as information technology services, human resource staffing and accounting. These providers cater to offshoring business process outsourcers.

The movement of coworking then drove the hybridization of workspaces. Coworking spaces became the widely-popular flexible workspace. Offering open space layouts with trendy interior designs and variety of working environments to cater the different needs of tech startups and freelancers. Nowadays, they also offer private offices, conference room rentals as well as event spaces.

The synergy between the sharing economy and the evolving industry of workspace solutions paved the way for a new breed of offices that can benefit both the employee and the employer. Shared spaces caters to both the needs of the company and the needs of its employees.

Besides, sharing is caring. Ready to share your offices with the rest of the world? Talk to us today!

The twenties of someone’s life is often called as one of the most exhausting moments. Everything is complicated and the world doesn’t really give you a handout on how to successfully survive this frenzy. And though you have grownups to give you – at the very least – a rundown of what to expect, you’re still confused.

In summary, people often associate their twenties as this disorderly time of their life that they barely managed to survive. These are the years wherein almost everyone is frustrated and unsure of where they are heading, of what they actually want in life. It’s quite the chaos, really.

Chances are by the time you’re in your twenties, you want to learn how to stand on your own. You tell your family that as grateful as anyone can be that they aren’t cutting you off, you want to “make it” on your own. Or maybe they still haven’t let you live by yourself, so here you are, independent but not really.

It’s all complicated because everything has changed. You’ve entered a new territory without prior knowledge on how to do things correctly. You do what every person in your age do right after graduating, look for a job. Grownups make it look so easy yet here you are, trying you best to look as professional as you can be – thinking that maybe if you dress well enough, iron your shirt properly, you’d fool everyone that you have your life together.

And somewhere in the middle, there’s this uneasiness in your heart. Do I actually like my job or am I just fooling myself that I’m happy here? Am I doing this because I love what I’m doing or is this just for show? So that people won’t ridicule me that I’m being left behind. You wonder if you’re actually cut for this traditional office and think that maybe you should try coworking or be a digital nomad, isn’t that the trend nowadays?

It only gets worse when you’ve come to the point that you finally realize maybe this isn’t for you. You’re at a loss for words. You want to follow what your heart wants, work on something that you actually love, but they won’t let you. Because there’s another dilemma that you have to consider; expectations.

Society expect you to get a high paying job so that you’d pay back your parents for everything they’ve done for you or to finally get that college loan of off your back. The moment universities thrust you into the real world, you have to get yourself together – no time for travelling in hopes of finding yourself or figuring out what you want in life, that’s a complete detour from the road of success.

Don’t forget about your social life, they’d add. You need to have enough time to socialize with other people and have fun. A high-paying 9-to-5 job, a bursting social life and the intuition of doing the right thing is what they expect from you, a young person in their twenties barely having any idea on what’s happening.

But here’s the thing, there’s about a million of your generation who doesn’t have their life together. They may try to fool society with their Instagram posts and Facebook statuses, deep down, they’re just trying to live through another day.

花樣年華 or hwayang-yeonwha, that’s what your twenties is actually like. The most beautiful moment in life. It’s the only time you get to truly know yourself through and through. This is the only time that you get to decide for yourself; paying no attention to what anyone else thinks.

Admittedly, it’s the most tumultuous time of your life. At the same time, it’s the most adventurous one. It doesn’t have to be as hard as they make it out to be, don’t rush and live your life by your own pace. Soak yourself with every ounce of experience and life lesson you can get. Find your people – one’s that would help you grow. Join a community that will criticize not to pull you towards a downward spiral, but to aid you in soaring higher than you thought you can.

Make peace with yourself knowing that the most beautiful moment in life is a synergy of the good and the bad. You’ll pull through your twenties. A day will come and these hard times will be a distant memory of when you learned to accept everything that life offers you.