Entrepreneurship, process
innovation and value creation by a
non-profit SME
Kun-Huang Huarng and Tiffany Hui-Kuang Yu
Feng-Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose – By using three key factors – namely, funding, stakeholders, and legitimacy – this study
seeks to analyse the successful entrepreneurial experiences of a non-profit small to medium-sized
enterprise: the Taiwan EBook Supply Cooperative Limited (TEBSCo).
Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a case study.
Findings – From a legitimacy perspective, TEBSCo is the only registered organisation facilitating
e-book consortia in Taiwan. From a stakeholder perspective, TEBSCo is managed by a board of
directors, who are elected from the member representatives. In addition to creating value for its
members, TEBSCo also creates value for non-members and vendors. Its major funding is from annual
membership fees. TEBSCo’s innovation process, as a collective entrepreneurial activity in a non-profit
SME, creates intangible as well as tangible value. The successful experiences of TEBSCo can be used
as examples for new entrants.
Originality/value – TEBSCo is the only registered organisation facilitating e-book consortia in
Taiwan. The successful experiences of TEBSCo can be used as examples for new entrants, and shows
a new form of entrepreneurial activity.
Keywords Entrepreneurialism, Economic cooperation, Libraries, Purchasing groups,
Small to medium-sized enterprises
Paper type Case study
Introduction
The originality of this study lies first and foremost in the fact that entrepreneurial
activity, typically associated with the creation of new businesses and innovation in the
for-profit sector, is studied here in a non-profit SME. In this sense, the term “non-profit
entrepreneurship” may appear contradictory (Cordes et al., 2004) although Benz (2009)
and Chapelle (2010) argue that entrepreneurship is more properly characterised as a
non-profit seeking activity. Second, previous thinking on the nature of the entrepreneur
sees this figure as carrying out individual activity of discovery, evaluation, and
exploitation of opportunities (Schumpeter, 1934, 1950; Venkataraman, 1997; Shane and
Venkataraman, 2000; Shane et al., 2003; Hitt et al., 2001; Cuervo, 2005; Barret and
Mayson, 2008; Wagener et al., 2010; Rodriguez Ramı
´
rez et al., 2010) but the
entrepreneurial activity studied here refers to a collective activity in which individual
actions become a part of the collective effort.
In addition, there are many large and successful non-profit organisations that exist
today. Social entrepreneurship that corresponds to what is accepted as
entrepreneurship and that captures the way where entrepreneurship may be
altruistic (Tan et al., 2005). Meanwhile, many universities have created
entrepreneurship centres which offer a set of services to their students and
professors recently (Del-Palacio et al., 2008). Issues of performance have been studied
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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MD
49,2
284
Management Decision
Vol. 49 No. 2, 2011
pp. 284-296
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0025-1747
DOI 10.1108/00251741111109160