Building connection
How ST3AM’s community management creates innovation communities
Anyone entering the ST3AM workspace is immediately struck by the bright, warmly designed interiors. This is a place that facilitates focused work, while encouraging spontaneous encounters. But for WISTA staff members Elizabeth “Liz” Anderson and Lucas Todesco, it’s about far more than creating a pleasant working environment.
Both are responsible for community management across the ST3AM workspaces, which now operate at two locations in Berlin: at Technology Park Adlershof and Ludwig Erhard Haus in Charlottenburg, home to the space New Work ST3AM by IHK & WISTA. Their role goes well beyond organising spaces or supporting tenants. They are trying to build something that is difficult to engineer: a functioning innovation community, where people from different industries and perspectives come together and generate ideas they might never have reached on their own. The fact that Anderson and Todesco now find themselves in this role is no coincidence, even if their paths were quite different.
Anderson grew up in the United States and has lived in Germany for around 15 years. She spent many years working as a teacher of English and history, before moving into corporate communications. There, she realised that what she enjoyed most was connecting people. “I discovered that I love building internal networks and creating connections,” she says. “Relationships have always been my thing.”
Todesco arrived in Germany from Brazil to study and eventually settled in Berlin. He began his career in the start-up scene, gradually taking on responsibilities beyond his core role—organising events, supporting onboarding processes, and shaping company culture. Over time, this evolved into a dedicated position: people experience manager. “It was about everything that defines what it feels like to work in a company,” he says. He later moved into the world of co-working spaces. In Adlershof, the opportunity arose to take this approach a step further—from shaping culture within a single organisation to fostering a community across many.
Community is at the heart of ST3AM. The physical space provides the framework—the real question is how people collaborate within it.
Anderson is particularly interested in communication and collaboration. Even small changes, she says, can have a significant impact on how teams work. An example: Instead of responding to an idea with a reflexive “but”, it is possible to say “and at the same time”. The substance remains similar, but the effect shifts. The idea is not blocked but developed further. “These small techniques help teams collaborate more effectively,” she explains.
Another useful concept is that of so-called “nudges”—subtle prompts that steer behaviour in a particular direction. Originating in behavioural economics, the idea can be applied to workspace design: shaping environments in ways that make collaboration almost happen by default.
The core concept is the same at both locations. Yet each space has its own character, which is shaped largely by its surroundings. Adlershof is heralded as Germany’s largest Science and Technology Park with an environment shaped by Berlin’s Humboldt-Universität, research institutes, and technology-driven start-ups. Here, the focus is on experimentation, development and prototyping. Projects in these areas are supported by two makerspaces. In contrast, New Work ST3AM by IHK & WISTA in Charlottenburg has a different perspective. It’s more closely connected to business networks, associations and policy stakeholders.
Despite these differences, both sites follow the same five guiding principles: focus, collaboration, wellbeing, prototyping, and learning and growth. Together, they provide a shared structure.
“We don’t want people to come here, open their laptop, work, and then go home,” says Todesco. That’s why Anderson and Todesco design formats that encourage interaction: workshops, networking events or shared community lunches. Moments where conversations happen without the immediate pressure to produce results. Another initiative involves so-called challenges, where multiple organisations work together on new approaches—not necessarily to create a finished product, but to spark creative thinking. “In our society, many people are quite risk-averse,” says Anderson. Building a community therefore also means creating trust.
Rico Bigelmann for Potenzial
ST3AM Working Spaces - WISTA Management GmbH