Social Business

Dear Elliot -

For the sake of not wanting to think about the failing Obama presidency, I think it might be interesting to talk about some exciting, new approaches to solving the world's problems.

The idea that comes to mind is from Muhammed Yunus, the Nobel Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, in his book "The World Without Poverty". In his book, Yunus advocates for the creation of "Social Businessess" - essentially, businesses that provide services and/or products and compete with for-profit businesses for market share, while having the sole mission of making social change.

The social business would work towards profit, but it's owners would not receive dividends, instead all profits would go to expanding the business so as to further create positive change. The best example of this is a partnership between Grameen Bank and Danon (the french yogurt company). The two have partnered to sell cheaply packaged, inexpensive, and highly nutritious yogurt to people in poverty in Bangladesh. While the partnership has every intention of making profit off this exercise, the main mission is to help solve childhood malnutrition.

I think this is a fantastic idea. In general, I am all for incorporating business models into social change initiatives. What could be more sustainable? And when it comes to effectiveness, businesses have the reputation for being much more efficient. I'm loving the idea.

Do you have any social business models in mind? Perhaps some sort of social networking idea? I'm all about exploring this concept further.

Zach