Social Business
Chairman, Yunus Centre
Founder, Grameen Bank
(Remarks by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus delivered at AmCham Luncheon Meeting on July 12, 2011)
Thank you Aftab and thank you Gafur!
Assalamu Alaikum! First I apologize for being delayed. This is due to the familiar circumstances that are beyond the control of citizens.
But these fifteen minutes of delay is not as big a delay compared to five years of delay. Gafur has been very persistent for the last five years that I come and speak at this meeting and his persistence has become more and more intensive as the years went by. This has brought me to the conclusion that if you want to accomplish anything impossible, you can assign it to Gafur. You can rest assured, he will make it happen; he is a very persistent person.
I was always promising, but not delivering. So today I am very happy that finally I could deliver myself here to talk about social business. And that is the issue that he wants me to discuss in this meeting.
The basic concept of social business came to my mind because that is the kind of thing I was doing. Traditionally we talk about business as a vehicle to earn money, to make profit. The whole idea of business was built around the idea of making money. We all know that the earliest form of business was barter, the exchange of one good for another goods. You have something, and I have something else, and we exchange them so that both of us are better off. You have rice and I have fish. So we exchange some rice for some fish. After the exchange both of us have rice and fish. Both are happier.