When he asked for a meeting with Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, Franck Riboud, CEO of Group Danone, a global corporate giant (whose American brand name is Dannon), didn’t realize that his concept of doing business was about to change forever. A few hours and a hand shake transformed the hard driving, profit-motivated executive, into an unwavering advocate of ‘social businesses’. Barely a year later, Riboud joined Professor Yunus in Bangladesh to launch Grameen Danone, with the mission of producing and selling specially-fortified yogurt to improve the health of poor Bangladeshi children.
In his new book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Professor Muhammad Yunus expands his vision with the pioneering idea of social businesses. These companies operate as businesses with a strictly social mission and reinvest their profits to further their mission rather than distributing dividends to shareholders.
To many, this sounds like the impossible dream. But, drawing on his own experiences launching the world’s first purposely designed social businesses, Yunus shows how it can be done. From his collaboration with Danone to building eye care hospitals that will save thousands of poor people from blindness, Creating a World Without Poverty offers a glimpse of his vision for a world completely transformed by thousands of social businesses.
Creating a World Without Poverty 