Shaping the Social
Business Movement

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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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01

10 Years For You in Social Business

Creating a worldwide movement for Social Business
The Grameen Creative Lab was officially founded in January 2009 - but this was not its beginning. First footprints were left much earlier: In June 2007, Peter Spiegel, 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.
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WHAT WE DO
01 Interact: Awareness
02 Incubate: Understanding

• We brainstorm Social Business ideas at creative workshops.
• We experiment with our own Social Businesses on a small scale.
• 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
• We will create a certification methodology for Social Business

our activities
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
our commitments
Sustainability

As agents of change, we constantly concentrating our efforts to make our events sustainable. In order to reach our goal to make the emissions of the GSBS 2015 transparent we are working with Caretraders – a young start-up from Copenhagen – increasing our sustainability commitment by offsetting those carbon emissions that are inevitably associated with running the conference.

Inclusiveness

At GCL, our voices have different backgrounds, cultures, experiences and insights that together create the quality of the content of our events and help us develop social business ideas to produce sustainable change. In a world with inequalities, some of the most important voices are cut out. This is why GCL offers reduced tickets to participants from Least Developed Countries based on application.

Impact

We are determined to foster long-lasting relationships between participants and make our events the beginning of great ideas for social businesses. GCL aims to create, challenge and shape ideas, and connect stakeholders with social business teams. We are committed to follow all initiatives developed with our help and during our events and report on their development.

partnering with the best
Founding partners
PUBLISH WHAT WE THINK
LATEST BLOGS
28 May 2019HOW SOCIAL BUSINESS, COOPERATIVES, AND THE POWER OF SOLIDARITY TRANSFORM SOCIETIES IN A SMALL AND A BIG SCALE
"There is so much potential in the room to create change," said Daniela Mahr in...
27 May 2019WIE SOCIAL BUSINESS, GENOSSENSCHAFTEN UND DIE KRAFT DER SOLIDARITÄT IM KLEINEN UND IM GROSSEN GESELLSCHAFTEN TRANSFORMIEREN
„Hier ist so viel Potenzial im Raum, um Veränderung zu bewirken“, sagte Daniela Mahr bei...
04 October 2018PROF. YUNUS HONORING GERMAN UNITY DAY 2018
On October 3rd the Germans celebrate a very important event in the history of Germany...
25 September 2018HOW PLASTIC WASTE CAN CREATE A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL-MINDED PEOPLE
“Plastic does not belong to nature and we need a fundamental system change to address...

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. Environmentally conscious
  6. Workforce gets market wage with better working conditions
  7. …do it with joy