No one at the NYT remembers Idealab of the 1990's -- which was an early (the first) Internet tech coworking place back when fast internet and good hardware were not cheap and it made a lot of sense to sell a bit of your company to gain access.
While companies came and went, the supporting people and the hardware remained; so the ethos was to help others when things were blowing up, regardless of whether the explosions were positive or negative.
In a refurbished Salvation Army building in downtown Lincoln, Neb., Bob Hinrichs runs a co-working space for about 150 people. ...Mr. Hinrichs works to nurture connections among the small businesses -- software developers, public-relations consultants and sustainable-agriculture advocates -- that work in his space, and he says such cooperation is helping the local economy.