8. The Way Forward for Cooperative Banks

At their birth, cooperative banks were considered an innovation in the banking market. They have been able not only to supply credit to those considered as not creditworthy, but they also proposed a new vision of the social and economic structure. Today, this innovative energy seems lost. Cooperative banks mostly borrow innovation from outside, both in terms of products and organizations (e.g. from other banks or financial institutions). Instead, true Schumpeterian innovation is today needed to correct existing hazards and imbalances. Those innovations imply a strategic view of the productive and the redistributive orientation to favour the first at the expense of the second. Capitals are indeed necessary, but cooperative banks should also create value and worthy relations to enhance a sustainable process of development.