This is a CTP of initiative: Impact Hub Amsterdam (Netherlands)
In November 2013, Impact Hub Amsterdam relocated from their building on the Westerstraat in the western part of central Amsterdam, into a new building in the area of the Westergasfabriek next to the Westerpark. The process of relocation went hand in hand with a rebranding shift from The Hub Amsterdam towards Impact Hub Amsterdam. The turning point was crucial in that the new space enabled the further development of the business and helped to overcome barriers that were posed by the prior building. As co-founder 1 describes: “we were not satisfied with what the building, as a physical space, offered in terms of possibilities for co-creation, and also the working climate was not matching ours”.
The relocation enabled the further growth and professionalization of the enterprise. As a member of Impact Hub Amsterdam describes the new location at the Westerpark in comparison to the prior space: “[it] has grown, and it’s been much more professionally set up (…) because the demands were more professionalized. (…) The physical space is [also] much more professional, the other space was more like a living room. It was beautiful but difficult to work. Events went through the working space, the kitchen was in the middle, and it was more chaotic. (…) [It is] more organized here, more transparent, one can keep working without being disturbed.” (Member of Impact Hub Amsterdam, interviewee 27, as quoted in Wittmayer et al. 2015).
Besides Impact Hub Amsterdam, the Westergasfabriek area includes several other entrepreneurial, creative and cultural spaces and initiatives, bars, restaurants and a few offices and workspaces. The overall space of the Impact Hub is separated into three different areas. First, there is the ‘dynamic’ space, in which members or their visitors are being welcomed. Second, there is a more silent space called ‘Focus’ which offers the possibility to conduct focused work and also functions as an after hours event space. Thirdly, behind this ‘Focus’ area there are three private meeting spaces to be rented for specific meetings. These rooms can be rented by both members and external organisations as long as they are impact-oriented.
The shareholder described the drivers behind the relocation process as a combination of a push and a pull. The push had to do with the renewal of the lease and the relationship with the owner, “which wasn’t particularly constructive or trustful, and they were going to start charging more to renew the lease”. They realised that they were “really paying a lot for the rent”, and that this was “quite a drain on the resources of the organization”. The pull for the relocation had to do with the plans for a next level ‘Hub 2.0’ which were not possible in the prior location: “the kind of things they were envisaging would have been hard to do in the location they were at”.
While the Impact Hub was looking for a new space, “there was also the need and urge for a new story and a new idea for the Hub”(co-founder 1). This manifested itself in the idea to offer more services, but also since the community was growing it was possible for the members “to mature in their membership”. Social entrepreneurs were invited to reflect on their enterprises and have community conversations on how to improve their businesses, but also to have conversations about “the state of the world” and having a ‘reality check’ on what their roles could be in changing this. Besides the search for a new location, the co-founders thus also needed to develop a business-model and environment that made it possible to meet the demands of the members, while also defining the social space that they were and the ideals that they wanted to stand for. “It made them really revisit that question (…): ‘what are different revenue streams beyond just having people pay for desk space?’. And that released a lot of energy and creativity around the [idea of] incubation labs” (shareholder). According to co-founder 1 “it wasn’t just about developing a place where entrepreneurs could find each other, but also to develop it to have impact in and for the city”.
The co-founders were the main leaders of the relocation process. According to co-founder 2: “the process of letting go of the Westerstraat was pretty much a collaborative process that engaged the whole community in a co-creation process”. Both members and shareholders were involved in the process of looking for a new location. The shareholder indicates that s/he was involved in “working energetically” with the selection of a new location, in terms of sensing which of the potential spaces had the best “energy” to match the Impact Hub.
Once the space had been found, they were supported by a strong team, which according to the co-founder 1 “brought more expertise”. An architect from architecture bureau AKKA, who was a member of the community, was involved to design the new space and facilitating the co-creation process with the members. This new space was co-designed by and with the members in a ‘collaborative space design’ process. There was also a new round of investments, which made it possible to reconstruct the space. The municipality also started to play a role in this process as a landlord and was “also involved in some of the co-creation sessions”.
There were several relevant events before, during and after the process of relocation. First, there was the information about the ending of the lease of the former location at the Westerstraat in September 2012, including the realisation that the renewal of the lease would come with a significant increase in costs. The co-founders decided that this location was not ideal for their practices and they decided to look for another location, which would better serve their needs and those of their members. Subsequently, there was the actual search for an alternative location, which led to numerous conversations about multiple places across Amsterdam.
Once the new location at the Westerpark had been found, there were several related events. One important event was the signing of the new contract and the celebration of this moment in July 2013. This was important because the co-founders were looking for a place already for quite a while without having any success. Together with the community they therefore celebrated the signing of the lease.
There were also events for the co-creation of the space and the related process of re-branding, including one on architectural specifics of the space. To construct the actual working places at the Westergasfabriek, the co-founders together with an architect have held a ‘collaborative space design’ process between March and November 2013. Together with community members they developed a vision and concrete plans on how to develop a building that could serve the purpose of co-creation the best, while also giving enough room for the members to conduct their own practices. There was also an event in September 2013 that allowed a ‘sneak preview’ of the space and where the new brand Impact Hub was revealed.
Last but not least, there was a formal launch party of the new place, which coincided with 5th year anniversary on 21st of November. It was “really the community celebrating the success of the community” (co-founder 1).
The main struggles concerned the process of finding an appropriate new location for the Impact Hub Amsterdam: “The biggest struggle that led to fatigue in the process, is that it took us more than a year to find a space (…) We knew that Amsterdam was difficult in finding the right space for us, because many buildings are very small, tiny and closed, and not open in a way that we could offer the right hub environment. We are very critical and demanding. We wanted a beautiful light, not expensive, big open floors and a beautiful building (…) So we were not settling for a space, we were [only] settling for something that makes you cry and be like ‘wow this is beautiful’” (co-founder 2).
There was also a contestation regarding members who didn’t want to move or continue their businesses at the new location. People did not want to leave, because “they didn’t believe it would be better” and because “people were afraid of what we would lose, because there was a strong feeling of community” (co-founder 1). With the relocation and the rebranding, came a more serious business aspect to the Impact Hub and some people were not keen on working in such an environment, which is described as a “typical growth tension” (co-founder 1). While the change in membership can be considered a struggle, it was also a natural process of change. While some members left, other members took new roles. Losing members and adjusting the membership were both the result of the natural colouring of the membership.
There were also disagreements with and between members on how to use the new space: should the focus only be on providing the members the services they needed, or should there also be external events? This struggle has always existed and it depends on the expectations of the members: “some people expect it to be an office that will not move, but we are also an innovation lab” (co-founder 1). This also included disagreements on which entrance to use as the main entrance, something that was still unresolved at the time of the interview in 2016. Another topic for debate is the music that is being played in the ‘Café’ area: “but that is just one of those things you have to let the community resolve itself” (co-founder 1).
Besides the change in membership, there was also a change in leadership in the months that followed, as two of the co-founders stepped down from the management team in April 2014. This was part of the process of growing as described earlier (see CTP PROFESSIONALIZATION). “As we grew, we had a different sense which skills we needed, how to grow, but there was also the sense of how to move from being founders to next level of professionalization. Our lives, our career perspectives were all changing (…) so there was the natural conversation about where we were going, what the roles are, and who takes leadership for what” (co-founder 1). This process contained several challenges, both at the personal level as well as at the level of the organisation. As formulated by co-founder 1, it was about “personal aspirations: ‘do any of us stay in Amsterdam, or do I want to start another enterprise?’ (…) [and] it was also a conversation about what did the Hub need. How do you start to get more professional expertise? How do you move from a doing-it-yourself kind of thing, to actually upgrading it with expertise? (…) The critical turning point started with that move [relocation], but it was showing us how we had to grow up along our expectations and grow up with our talent”.
Besides these contestations during the relocation, there were also a considerable contestation that followed after the relocation, in particular with the municipality of Amsterdam and the landlord of the building. When the Impact Hub moved to the area of the Westergasfabriek, it was done on basis of a lease contract for five years, while there was the informal agreement that the lease would be extended. However, after the Impact Hub had moved and invested much in reconstructing the new location, they were ‘voted out’ of the building by the city council and they were informed that the lease would not be extended and in fact cut shorter. Also, there was resistance from the enterprises that were already present at the area of Westergasfabriek: “they resisted our coming into the space (…) I think it was a tension that was already existing before we were around, it was there from the time we signed the lease” (co-founder 1). This led to a long a difficult process of appealing this decision, and eventually, the search for yet another location. This process is described as a critical turning point in itself (see CTP ENDING THE LEASE).
Once the relocation itself was known and anticipated, the implications and struggles that came with it were not. As co-founder 1 recalls: “We knew exactly the date that we had to move, and what we were up against, we did not know how difficult it would be”. Co-founder 2 adds that they did not “really have the conversation like ‘oh what are we going to do in 5 years time’, because we weren’t really interested in answering that question” (co-founder 2).
Particularly the struggle with and resistance from the Westergasfabriek was not anticipated. When the Impact Hub was negotiating about using a particular space at this location, the resistance didn’t came through until it was too late. “They resisted our coming into this space, which we didn’t know entirely until some of the stuff surfaced around this space not being available for the 5 or 10 years that we imagined” (co-founder 1). This tension, as well as the tensions with the municipality that followed, demanded a large amount of their time and energy. Because of this they could focus less on the actual re-branding and the problems that came along with the need for re-location.
The actual moving into this space did also bring some particular problems along which were not anticipated. For instance, while re-constructing the location, they ran into all kinds of delays with knocking down walls. Co-founder 1 tells: “There were some things we were planning to do, but couldn’t do with the space. But that was all part of the journey”. Along with these physical barriers during the moving process, there were the implications of a changing environment and the specific character of the new location, and the effect this would have on the day-to-day practices within the Impact Hub. As co-founder 1 remembers: “All the habits changed, from where you keep the extra milk to how the events flow. That was much harder than anticipated. We walked into the space and thought ‘where do I sit?’ Members also had their habits, and suddenly that’s when you realised that the change of environment really disrupted a lot of us in our habits”. Looking back on this process, co-founder 1 acknowledges that she understands this process much better and sees it “almost like a snake shedding its skin; you are growing into your new skin and shedding your old one. But we thought it would happen more naturally than it did”.
One of the main lessons is that for a re-location which requires constructing a whole new space, it is important to take more time than was available in this case. Because of the need to move to the new location quickly, they did not have the opportunity to take more time to prepare the re-location.
Another lesson learned is that moving to a location for a short period of time – as turns out to be the case for the Westerpark – is not a good idea. “It doesn’t make sense for us, nor for our investors, to invest and be able to build something and create an identity and to disrupt the community [for just a temporary location]. Especially when you want to be a permanent contributor to a city” (co-founder 1). It is because of this that the Impact Hub has developed concrete strategies to avoid such problems in the upcoming re-location, and future ones. Co-founder 1 indicates that this particular experience has provided insight to always dig deeper to find out all the things that need to be taken into consideration and to look beyond the story that is being told: “you have to dig in all kinds of places to find out the real things, like the nature of the lease and to really make explicit what you want”.
Another lesson revolves around the importance of co-creating a narrative with the community, instead of creating one for them. In this process it is not only about involving people and thereby making them become a part of the bigger picture, but people provide useful insights on what this bigger picture should and can look like. “It’s not just about the Impact Hub, it’s about something bigger and the Impact Hub is a vehicle for this” (co-founder 1).
Co-founder 2 argues that in this case it would have been helpful to have had more capacity in terms of having a professional staff who could support and take over responsibilities. “We wanted to do everything ourselves. Because we had limited capacity and limited resources to do so, we did everything ourselves. So if you know that it is happening, if you can, build more resources and capacity. That would be a lot smarter and wiser, and it would offer a process that’s a bit smoother” (see CTP PROFESSIONALIZATION). As such, an important lesson learnt concerns the redistribution of tasks so that daily operations could still run smoothly without being affected by contestations around different developments. In this case, all tasks and developments were running through each other, which made the already difficult process even more difficult to implement.
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