NEW BOOKS

Nobel Prize Winner Discusses Social Business

By Anne W. Howard

Creating a World Without Poverty: How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives
by Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus, who shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with the company he founded, Grameen Bank, explores the possibility of exploiting capitalism to eradicate poverty through "social businesses" — companies that are "cause-driven rather than profit-driven" and cover costs but do not return profits to investors, or else are profit-driven companies owned by poor people.

Trained as an economist, Mr. Yunus created Grameen Bank in 1976 to provide the poorest people in Bangladesh with access to small, low-interest loans. In this book, he proposes that social businesses can solve problems that capitalism, government, and nonprofit groups cannot.

A social business operates just like a "profit maximizing" business, he writes, and charges for the products or services provided. However, its goal is not to return the largest profit to investors but "to create social benefits for those whose lives it touches."

The author explores the benefits to investors, the possibility of a "social stock market," taxes and regulations that apply to this new type of organization, problems that social businesses encounter, and how the companies can be evaluated.

Mr. Yunus discusses his own experience in social business, with Grameen Bank and its partnership with Danone, the French yogurt maker; the two companies have collaborated to bring healthy food at affordable prices to poor Bangladeshis, while employing local entrepreneurs to be distributors.

"When it is carefully planned, a social business can be very sound business," he writes. "Just as the business helps the community, the community helps the business. Both can grow and thrive together, lifting families and individuals to higher levels of economic achievement."

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, N.Y. 10107; http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com; 256 pages; $26; ISBN 1-58648-493-1.

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