Industry History

Flex vs Coworking: Why One Industry Has Two Names

Brokers, operators and trade bodies moved to “flex” between 2014 and 2019. In books and in Google searches, coworking never stopped growing, and flex barely registers.

Members & MarginsOctober 29, 2026 · 13 min read

Same idea, two names. Google search interest 2004 to 2026: coworking climbs to its all-time high while flex space stays near zero.

In this article

Two names for one idea
Where "flex" came from
The rename
The two vocabularies, side by side
What the public calls it
The price of being counted
What happened to organic
Why the argument is worth having
The middle ground

18 min · from here to the end

Two names for one idea

Half the industry says coworking. The other half says flex. They are describing the same thing, and they mostly do not read each other.

We recently traced the industry’s most quoted number back to where it started. This piece does the same for its two names: where each came from, who carried it, what each one measures, and why the argument between them keeps coming back.

Where “flex” came from

Three words, three origins, and only one of them was ever about people.

flex

A building type

Office at the front, warehouse at the back, adaptable to whatever a tenant did. In Google Books the phrase “flex space” peaks in the early 1990s, in this sense.2

1990s

flexible office

The serviced-office industry’s word

Regus, in its 2000 annual report: “flexible office space accounting for less than 2% of the global office market.”3 The same year a landlord described HQ Global as “the global leader in flexible workspace solutions.”4

2000

coworking

A room and the people in it

San Francisco, 2005. A programmer who wanted company while he worked rented a room in a community center two days a week and “gave it a new name: coworking.”25 Never a real estate category. Nobody who used it was describing a lease.

2005

By its 2009 report, Regus called itself the “world’s largest provider of flexible workspace,”5 and in 2011 the U.S. serviced-office trade body, founded in 1986 as the Executive Suite Association, renamed itself the Global Workspace Association.6 The serviced-office industry had its vocabulary a decade before anyone needed an umbrella. Coworking came up underneath it, fast, on its own, and with a different word for a different thing.

The rename

Coworking arrived with its own name, and in 2013 commercial real estate’s own research arm was still using it. Within a year the brokers began calling it something else. Ten documents, six years. The why comes after.

2013one word changes hands2019

2013
NAIOP Research FoundationDevelopers’ association
Publishes “Workplace Innovation Today: The Coworking Center,” on “coworking centers, which have grown from just one in 2005 to 781 in 2013.”28
The year before the rename. The word “coworking” appears 190 times in the report. “Flex” never names the category once.
coworking
2014
CBRE and GenesisBroker
“landlords partnering with flex space providers (co-working centres or serviced office providers)”7
The rename begins. Coworking is placed inside “flex space” as one kind of provider.
flex space
2015
Knight FrankBroker
“Flexible offices are another growth area, particularly collaborative offices.”8
Coworking described without being named.
flexible offices
2016
JLLBroker
“Seismic shift in demand for co-About that hyphen. Inside the coworking community, “co-working” has been a sore point for about as long as the word has existed. From outside it looks like pedantry. It is not. The hyphen is how the word comes out when it was learned from a report rather than a room, and the people who built the rooms can hear it. When a movement loses the right to name itself, it holds on to what is left, and sometimes what is left is one character.working space - up to 30% of a corporate portfolio will comprise flexible space by 2030.”1
The demand is still called co-working. The measurement is already called flexible space. The industry settled on the second.
co-working, measured as flexible space
2017
SavillsBroker
Launches Workthere to find “flexible, co-working and serviced office space.”9
A broker builds a business line on the umbrella, with coworking as one item under it.
flexible, co-working and serviced
2018
ColliersBroker
“Hence the phrase ‘flexible workspace’ to encompass both.”10
A broker says out loud why: one word for serviced offices and coworking together.
flexible workspace
Cushman & WakefieldBroker
“Coworking or flexible offices are becoming a staple in buildings.”11
Both words in one title, used as if they were the same thing.
coworking or flexible offices
CBREBroker
Launches Hana, for “flexible office space solutions.” Coworking is one of its three products.12
Coworking becomes a line item inside a flex business.
flexible office space solutions
2019
UK Business Centre AssociationTrade body
Renames itself the Flexible Space Association, June 20.13
The trade body takes the word as its name.
flexible space
WeWorkSEC filing
“We pioneered a ‘space-as-a-service’ membership model.”14
The best-known coworking company goes public without the word.
space-as-a-service

The highlighted term on each card is the word the document used for the category.

Nobody announced a rename. It happened one report at a time.

It happened inside the institutions that count space, broker it and finance it, and each step had a practical reason: one term for every short-term office product is easier to measure, compare and sell. Nobody in that chain was wrong to want it.

It was never unanimous. In July 2019 one operator told a London conference, “Coworking used to be a buzzword. Now it’s the leading word.”15 Two months later CBRE titled its national report “Let’s Talk About Flex.”16 Same year, two names.

The two vocabularies, side by side

One idea. Two names.

flex

Named by the people who count the space.

The serviced-office industry, 2000. The brokers, 2014 to 2019.

coworking

Named by the people who built it.

Community builders, 2005. Still the word the public uses.

	Coworking	Flex
Came from	The community builders who started it	The serviced-office industry and the brokers
Names	The people, and what happens between them	The contract and the terms
Brings to mind	Shared tables, open desks, members	Private offices on short terms
Measured in	Members, retention, how the room feels on a Tuesday	Occupancy, revenue per desk, share of the building
Who says it	Community builders, independent operators, members	Owners, brokers, lenders, large platforms

The operators who prefer “flex” are describing their product, not a philosophy. On a CBRE podcast in 2024, the chief executive of The Office Group said coworking “literally means you are in these massive open plans,” while what his company mostly sells is private offices on flexible contracts. “Flex is a better term,” he said, and then, “I think we still have to find the right word.”17

I think flex is accurate. It’s a substrate. It’s beneath the surface.
Jamie Hodari, chief executive of Industrious, on coworking, in the same conversation, 202417

The objections come in two kinds. Community builders say the word was chosen by people who have never spent a Tuesday in one, and that it leaves out the only thing that makes a space work: what happens between the people in it. Managed-office operators say the opposite problem: “flex” has become “a catch-all term for such a wide range of workspace products” that it no longer tells a buyer much.18 One side says the word holds too little. The other says it holds too much.

The argument surfaces every time someone calls for more professionalism and economic clarity, and someone else asks since when real estate became the measure of whether coworking has grown up. Both questions are fair. They are being asked from different seats.

Point of View

There is the dichotomy of flex versus coworking. There is the dichotomy of community versus monetization. They look like opposites, and they feed each other. The members are why the space works. The margins are why it is still open in year five.

The part I find most interesting is that the institutions that renamed coworking are the same ones that gave it a category. The movement grew fast enough on its own that commercial real estate had to look, and the buy-in that followed is what turned a movement into an industry. The price of that buy-in was the word. I do not read it as a betrayal. It is what being counted costs.

So I do not take a side in the naming argument. I use both words, because the people who own the buildings and the people who built the communities inside them both need to be understood, and most of my work is translating one to the other. I write it without the hyphen. Anyone who has opened a space will know why.

What the public calls it

Step outside the industry’s own reports and the answer is not close.

What people search for, 2004 to October 2026

Google Trends, worldwide web search, monthly, scaled so the busiest month equals 100.19 The dots mark the years the institutions renamed the category. None of them moved the public line for “flex.” Books say the same: in Google’s scanned corpus “coworking” appears about forty times more often than any flex term.2

“Flex” won inside the industry’s paperwork. “Coworking” kept the public. Neither replaced the other, which is why both are still in use and why the argument keeps coming back. It is not a disagreement about what the thing is. It is two groups of people describing the half of it they can see.

The price of being counted

Coworking did not wait to be discovered. It spread on its own momentum, from one borrowed room in 2005 to thousands of spaces worldwide within a decade, with no broker, no lender and no trade body behind it, and nobody counting but the industry’s own magazine.26 That speed is what made commercial real estate look. And once it looked, the institutions that renamed coworking were the same ones that gave it capital, institutional landlords and a line in the research. The category is many times larger for it: more than nine thousand locations in the United States alone today, on a listing site’s broader definition.27

The price of being counted was the word. An institution can only name what it can measure. A lease term, a share of a building and a revenue per desk all have a vocabulary. A Tuesday on which strangers become colleagues does not. The community manager is on the spreadsheet, as a salary. The community is not on it anywhere, which means the only way a ledger can see community is as a cost. So the measuring institutions named the part that fit their forms, and the part that did not fit went unnamed.

What happened to organic

Coworking is not the first word a movement coined and an institution took over. The closest parallel is on every supermarket shelf, and the two stories run step for step.

organic

Coined by: Farmers, 1940
Redefined by: The U.S. government, 2000
Argued down by: The industry’s trade association, 2005
Still used by: Every shopper

coworking

Coined by: A programmer, 2005
Renamed by: Brokers and trade bodies, 2014 to 2019
Measured by: What a lender can count
Still used by: Everyone who searches for it

Step by step, with the dates:

organiccoworking

A movement names itFarmers, from 1940, with a meaning they held themselves.One programmer in San Francisco, 2005, with a word for the people in the room.25

It works, and it spreadsFarmers write their own standards, from 1967 in Britain and 1973 in California.20Thousands of spaces within a decade, counted only by the industry’s own magazine because nobody else was counting.26

The institutions arriveA federal law in 1990, a national rule in 2000. The definition moves to Washington.21Brokers and trade bodies, 2014 to 2019. The word reaches every research report, as “flex.”

The definition is argued downIn 2005 a court strikes synthetic ingredients from organic food. Congress puts them back within the year, with language the industry’s trade association wrote.22 23What counts is what can be underwritten. A community manager appears as a salary. The community appears nowhere.

The originators objectFarmers start labels of their own: Certified Naturally Grown, “beyond organic,” the Real Organic Project.23Community builders keep saying coworking, and keep building the thing the word was for.

The public keeps the wordMost shoppers still believe “organic” means what the farmers meant, including things the rule never required.24In books and search, coworking never stopped growing. Flex barely registers.

The movement gains a market and loses the right to define itself. Then it spends a decade asking whether the thing being sold is still the thing it meant.

Coworking is in that decade now. The useful question is not which side is right. It is whether a space can be fluent in both vocabularies at once, because the institutions are not leaving, and neither are the people who built the communities.

Why the argument is worth having

Because the name picks the yardstick. Call a space flex, and it is measured like real estate: occupancy, term, the share of the building, what a lender will credit. Call it coworking, and it is measured the way a community is: who comes, who stays, who they met, and whether the room works.

Read the same space as

flexcoworking

Office · 12 moAn accountant, year three

Office · 6 moTwo designers who met here

Office · month to monthA founder, month two

Office · 12 moA lawyer, year five

Amenity · no rentBook club, Thursdays

Office · 3 moA podcast, year one

Office · 12 moA startup of four

Shared area · counted per deskThe long table

Common area · unletWhere the introductions happen

Office · 12 moHere since opening day

Office · vacantSomeone’s, by Friday

LobbyWhere someone asks how it went

OccupancyMembers: Counted per desk, per monthForty businesses behind one door
TermRetention: Month to month reads as riskWho comes back after the first month
Share of the buildingThe community: One floor of six, inside the safe shareWhat happens between the people, which nobody sells
What a lender creditsA Tuesday: The income, at a discount or at zeroWhether the room is alive at nine

Illustrative space. The same twelve rooms, read with each vocabulary. Neither reading is wrong. Each one is half.

A space that only works on one yardstick usually does not last. The rent has to be paid, and the members have to want to come back. The spaces that have been open longest tend to be the ones where someone was fluent in both.

The middle ground

The middle ground is not a compromise between the two words. It is three things each side has to stop believing.

If you build the community

Three shifts

You cannot put a number on community.

Retention is community, as a number.

Members stay because of the people. Measured month by month, that is the one thing about your room a lender can finally read.

The landlord does not get it.

The landlord has a date.

The rent is due whether the room is alive or not. A lease is a promise with a date on it, and the date does not care about Tuesday.

We are not real estate.

You are the building’s front door.

Companies arrive on a desk, grow, and take a lease upstairs. Count the graduations. That is your value in the owner’s language.

What you bringThe demand itself, and the premium members pay over a bare office.

If you own the building

Three shifts

Coworking is an amenity.

Community is the product.

It is what members pay the premium for. The people paid to tend it are its cost of goods, the way a kitchen is the cost of a restaurant.

If it cannot be measured, it is not there.

If you do not measure it, you will never finance it.

Retention, graduations to leases, waiting lists: all countable. The lender will not change first. You can.

Month to month is risk.

Month to month is the product.

Short terms are what members are buying. The rent still arrives, because they come back, and that is managed in the room, not on the lease.

What you bringThe building, the capital, and the permanence that lets a Tuesday keep happening in year ten.

Why is the middle ground necessary, rather than nice? Because neither side is leaving. The institutions that count space are not going to stop counting it, and the people who build communities are not going to stop building them, so a space that speaks only one language is choosing to be misunderstood by half of the people it depends on. An owner who cannot hear the room will fund the wrong things. A community that cannot read the ledger will lose its room when the lease comes up.

The industry will go on using both words, and it should. One names what the people are doing. The other names what the building is being asked to do. Neither is wrong, and neither is the whole thing. A space that can say both, and mean both, is the kind that is still open in year ten.

Frequently asked questions

Where did the term "flex space" come from?

In U.S. commercial real estate, flex space first described adaptable buildings that combine office with light industrial or warehouse use. Google Books shows the phrase at its most common in the early 1990s, in that sense. The office-services meaning came separately, from the serviced-office industry, which was using "flexible office space" by 2000.

What is the difference between flex space and coworking?

In the industry's own usage, flex is the umbrella for any office taken on short, flexible terms, including serviced private offices, managed offices and coworking. Coworking names something else: people working side by side, and the community that forms between them. It can happen in an office building, a coffee shop, a library or a house.

When did "flex" replace "coworking"?

It did not, outside the industry. Brokers, trade bodies and large operators adopted "flex" and "flexible workspace" between roughly 2014 and 2019. In Google Books and Google Trends, coworking kept growing through 2026 and the flex terms stayed near zero.

Why do some operators prefer "flex"?

Because it describes the contract. As one large operator put it in 2024, coworking literally suggests large open plans, while most of what they sell is private offices on flexible terms.

Why do some operators object to "flex"?

Two different objections. Community builders say the word leaves out the people, and what happens between them, which is the only reason the space works. Others say it has become a catch-all so broad it no longer tells a buyer what they are getting.

Two names for one idea

Where “flex” came from

The rename

The two vocabularies, side by side

What the public calls it

The price of being counted

What happened to organic

Why the argument is worth having

The middle ground

Frequently asked questions

Sources

The people and the business of the coworking model.