Cooperatives’ Smart Secret Weapons in Development

Innovation (technological, process, product), territorial embedment and centrality of the person constitute the founding and peculiar elements of the cooperative entrepreneurial formula specificity. At the time of open innovation, cooperatives can be configured as one of the tools for developing community innovation processes—processes that involve and value people, who, in the cooperative resolution of their problems, manage to generate innovative solutions for their communities. With the italian cooperatives experience as background, the chapter shows how cooperative promotion could be a mean for local economic development.