When the Cambridge Innovation Center decided to implement new Covid policies for vaccines and testing, the innovation-focused shared workspace company braced for a potential hit to its business.
Ten weeks after the announcement, it’s seen less than half of a percent of its clients leave across its five U.S. workspaces. The CIC's revenue in the U.S. grew by 10%.
The decision-making process was a unique and challenging one, according to CEO Tim Rowe, juggling different state requirements and taking the kind of stance that business leaders usually try to avoid.
“As a chief executive, it was one of my first moments where I felt like we had to decide whether or not we’re going to take a stand. That’s not really a business thing,” he said in an interview.
CIC implemented vaccination requirements at CIC’s Boston, Cambridge, and Philadelphia locations. At other locations, it required proof of vaccination or negative test requirements.
One, Rowe said, was the "science-driven community" that makes up many of CIC's clients.
"We have laboratories and many of our sites people are familiar with infectious disease, even those that are maybe on the tech side are going to be more scientifically oriented people," he said. "So I think probably it was easier than the conversation might have been in a less science driven community."
One of those clients, Next Grid Markets managing partner Matthew Wolfe, said that the CIC policies showed “courage and leadership.”
“Not only has this provided much-needed peace of mind and comfort to my employees and me, it also demonstrates to other private — and public — entities that it can be done, and how to do it. It makes us proud to be CIC members,” Wolfe said in a statement.
Looking at the bigger picture, it’s also been a surprisingly strong moment for CIC in another way: as companies look to downsize from larger offices or set up hybrid workplaces, they’re looking to shared workspace solutions in “droves,” Rowe said.
In one case, a large overseas corporation that has a research group in Cambridge has 20 or 30 employees, but only 10 of them need office space. The company recently ended its lease and is looking at moving into CIC’s Kendall Square location.
“I think what may surprise people is the way business itself is kind of atomizing,” Rowe said.
And he said long-term trends look good for the space, buoyed by the changing course of the pandemic and growing recognition of the psychological costs to isolation.
“Our prediction for this particular category of shared workplaces is that it's going to take off completely,” Rowe said.
An earlier version of this article misstated where CIC offered public testing and which CIC locations had testing policies in place.
