Shaping The Social Business

Movement

As our Founder Professor Muhammad Yunus says,
We can create a world without poverty, because it is not the poor that create poverty

The Grameen Creative Lab’s vision is to serve society’s most pressing needs. We achieve this vision by promoting Prof. Yunus’ concept of Social Business. Unlike traditional business, a social business operates for the benefit of addressing social needs that enable societies to function more efficiently. Social Business provides a necessary framework for tackling social issues by combining business know-how with the desire to improve quality of life.

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partnering with the best
Founding partners
10 years for you in Social Business
Creating a worldwide movement for Social Business

The Grameen Creative Lab was officially founded in January2009 – but this was not its beginning. First footprints were left much earlier: In June 2007, Peter Siegel, the head of the Genisis Institute for Social Business, introduced Hans Reitz to Prof. Yunus at the Vision Summit in Berlin. It was the start of a friendship. In February 2008, Hans Reitz undertook his first trip to Bangladesh to visit Muhammad Yunus and learn about Grameen and the idea of Social Business.

WHAT WE DO
01 Interact: Awareness
02 Incubate: Understanding

• We brainstorm Social Business ideas at creative workshops
• We initiate and support academic research in collaboration with our partner universities

03 Create: Impact

• We consult corporations on how to set up a Social Business joint venture - worldwide
• We support investors and the public sector to create funds that run as Social Businesses

our projects
our events
A local conference on the power of solidarity, social business and cooperatives
Friends of Social Business ForumLearn More
A pre-meeting for students and young professionals
Young Challengers' & Pioneers'
MeetingLearn More
A full research conference on
Social Business
7th Social Business Academia ConferenceLearn More
The GSBS is the worldwide leading forum for Social Business
Global
Social
Business
SummitLearn More

As our Founder Professor Muhammad Yunus says,

We can create a world without poverty, because it is not the poor that create poverty

 

The Grameen Creative Lab’s vision is to serve society’s most pressing needs. We achieve this vision by promoting Prof. Yunus’ concept of Social Business. Unlike traditional business, a social business operates for the benefit of addressing social needs that enable societies to function more efficiently. Social business provides a necessary framework for tackling social issues by combining business know-how with the desire to improve quality of life. Prof. Yunus has already shown the effectiveness of this new type of business: his clear focus on eradicating extreme poverty combined with his condition of economic sustainability has created numerous models with incredible growth potential. With the idea of social business, Prof. Yunus has introduced a new dimension for capitalism: a business model that does not strive to maximize profits but rather to serve humanity’s most pressing needs.

The framework of a social business is based on 7 principles:

1. Business objective will be to overcome poverty, or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximization.
2. Financial and economic sustainability (non-loss)
3. Investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond investment money (non-dividend).
4. When investment amount is paid back, company profit stays with the company for expansion and improvement.
5. Gender-sensitive and environmentally conscious
6. Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions.
7. …do it with joy!