Opportunity Recognition and Innovative Solutions to Societal Challenges: The Case of Community Cooperatives in Italy

Abstract

In this chapter, we present some preliminary, exploratory evidence concerning the peculiarities surrounding the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities as encountered by community cooperatives, that is, entities established with the mission to create value for the community in which they operate and not for their members exclusively. Drawing from the experience of eight Italian community cooperatives, we offer initial empirical support to the argument that community embeddedness complicates the process of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. Community cooperatives confront the challenge of accommodating the disparate needs of community members, while operating within a context of resource constraints. However, community embeddedness also favors the engagement of community members in more creative processes to identify more innovative solutions to empower communities. Our preliminary findings speak to the emergent research on community-based enterprises and to the broader stream investigating entrepreneurship. They also show how cooperatives can be a source of social innovation while anchoring themselves to their imprinting of human-centered organizations, established to ameliorate the conditions of marginalized people.