Super-short Summary: We’ve added business solution ratings and recommendations to the platform so that members of 280+ coworking communities can now share product knowledge and experience, as well as buying-power.

This post runs over the details behind why we believe this will add more value for coworking communities, and how we’ve designed the features to reward knowledge sharing.

What if we could share knowledge across, and in-between, 280+ coworking communities in a few seconds?

If we look at every single entrepreneurial or coworking community, it’s undeniable that there’s an evergreen trove of knowledge surrounding what business solutions to use, and arguably more important, which to avoid.

This kind of knowledge is often shared within each community. Early-adopters are always keen to share the powerful new tools they always seem to find first. Serial-entrepreneurs share insights and experience regarding their stack of go-to platforms. Experienced and upstart freelancers can be found sharing tips and tricks from their war-chest of tools that they leverage each day.

This is not only awesome, but it’s also one of the biggest drivers that makes joining any decent coworking community such a no-brainer.

However, it also highlights what we believe is one of the biggest challenges facing the coworking world, and entrepreneurial ecosystems in general. Back in March 2014, we summed up this challenge as the ‘Beautiful Islands Problem’. 

Great entrepreneurial communities are built by operators who make sure that their members have every single possible opportunity to grow and succeed. ^{Tweet This}

The success and sustainability of any entrepreneurial communities worldwide is directly proportional to the successes enjoyed by its members. This is precisely why billions of dollars are being invested into trying to unlock as many opportunities as possible for the businesses growing within these kinds of communities.

Today we announce two new features designed from the ground up to incentivise, reward and streamline the sharing of these troves of knowledge and experiences.

These new features leverage and aggregate the shared experiences and recommendations on business solutions (from tens of thousands of members across 280+ communities) to form a powerful new tool that’s included with each of your memberships. Your members can increasingly be sure to get what they need to launch and grow as efficiently, and sustainably, as possible.

And by keeping each share action to under 2 seconds, it’s both accessible and useful to even the busiest of us coworking members and operators.

Half-a-second ratings of included solutions.

If you’ve ever saved money and money through a vendor’s solution on included.co, you can now leave a half-a-second rating of your experiences via your account page.

Every rating helps other coworking members to make decisions about which solutions to use. Ratings also clearly signal which solutions our vendors should improve, replace or double-down on; making sure that your own business keeps on getting great solutions on-demand.

Recommending new solutions to be included.

We have a number of innovative ways in which we discover, source and distribute superb solutions that really do support communities and their members’ businesses. Some of last year’s most popular solutions came in via recommendations from other members or operators of included communities.

However in order to truly revolutionise the way that business solutions are found, analysed, procured and evaluated; a lightning-fast mechanism was needed for recommending powerful apps, amazing people, groundbreaking services and superb businesses to the rest of the network.

By clicking the new ‘suggest a solution‘ button in your included account pages, you can now recommend your favourite lawyer, accountant, online tool or startup for distribution across the worlds fastest growing network of connected entrepreneurial communities.

Feeling momentous, and other incentives.

There’s two main reasons why you’ll feel great when you see a solution that you recommended go live across the network.

Firstly, you’ve helped promote a service, product or business that you love. And, you’ve also helped 100s (if not 1000s) of other businesses across the network discover a solution you adore.

Take a second and think about the impact you could make in just 2 seconds. It’s truly magical!

And as for the ratings, the half-a-second it took will also help other busy coworking folks to make decisions faster, saving their business time and money, which should also send good vibrations all the way down your spine. 

But we want to triple down on those great feelings and have designed both the Ratings and Recommendations engines so that members who share their experiences with the rest of the community will be rewarded in new and exciting ways. Ways that will not only create smiles, but drive your businesses forward even faster. 

But shhh ? more on that another day!

Be sure to follow us on @includedco and @includedco for what comes next, and other updates and stories from across our community of awesome communities.