This is a good example of What a Force for Good company is because it describes the difference between the Grameen approach and conventional approaches to business. Dr Yunus compares and contrasts, and provides specific examples of the results he has achieved.
Description:
Yunus talks about how he set up Grameen Bank: "Whenever I needed a rule or a procedure in our work, I just looked at the conventional banks to see what they do in a similar situation. Once I learned what they did, I just did the opposite. That's how I got our rules. Conventional banks go to the rich, we go to the poor; their rule is -- "the more you have, the more you get." So our rule became -- "the less you have higher attention you get. If you have nothing, you get the highest priority." They ask for collateral, we abandoned it, as if we had never heard of it. They need lawyers in their business, we don't. No lawyer is involved in any of our loan transactions."
He did not realise this until a banker told him: "Dr. Yunus, you are trying to put the banking system upside down."
His response? "Yes, because the banking system is standing on its head."
"In my work it never occurred to me that I should maximize profit. All my struggle was to take each of my enterprises to a level where it could at least be self-sustaining. I defined the mission of my businesses in a different way than that of the traditional businesses. "
Dr Yunus talks about some of the other social businesses that this has led Grameen to establish, now often in conjunction with corporate partners.
And he talks about how happy all of this has made him. He knows the profit made by conventional businesses makes people happy too. But he points out how an overwhelming focus on profit has made many business people into one-dimensional human beings.
We are not, naturally, one-dimensional people. "In order to take into account the multi-dimensionality of real human being we may assume that there are two distinct sources of happiness in the business world: 1) maximizing profit, and 2) achieving some pre-defined social objective. Since there are clear conflicts between the two objectives, the business world will have to be made up of two different kinds of businesses --1) profit-maximizing business, and 2) social business. Specific type of happiness will come from the specific type of business."
"Then an investor will have two choices: he can invest in one or in both. My guess is most people will invest in both in various proportions. This means people will use two sets of eye-glasses: profit-maximizing glasses, and social business glasses. This will bring a big change in the world. "
Dr Yunus closes with the following challenge to the students of MIT, which applies equally to us all:
"You are born in the age of ideas. ... The question I am raising now -- what use you want to make of them ? Make money by selling or using your ideas ? Or change the world with your ideas? Or do both ? It is upto you to decide."