Empower Workers to Innovate and Entrepreneurship: Raison d'être of Successful Workers Cooperatives

The study critically analyses selected Indian workers cooperatives to find reasons over time of its success or failures. Worker cooperatives flourish in many industries and regions, where decisions are made democratically by workers who also act as entrepreneurs, managers and members. By value creation it tends to provide employment, remains accountable to community. The entrepreneurs are risk takers but who innovate to satisfy ever-changing consumers’ needs succeed through well managed business. The study has qualitative research design employed on variety of workers cooperatives. It looks at phenomena of business cycle, value creation cum distribution, overlapping multiple roles of workers, management practices, innovation & product life cycle, consumer satisfaction vis-à-vis business performance. We attempts to explore and interpret dynamism of activities and interactions among key stakeholders to ascertain success factors. We find that continuous innovation and entrepreneur spirit is the key to success. The finding may help to advance socio-economic enterprises.