By Gines Haro Pastor

The microfinance pioneer and Nobel prize winner talks to Gines Haro Pastor about his future plans, supporting other social businesses and how the Grameen bank evolved.

You usually use the term social business instead of social enterprise. Can you explain the difference between them?

What I was trying to do was to take [entrepreneurship] in one particular direction: turning it into creating a social business. Social business is a business, where you don't want to make money for yourself, but you solve the problem with the business model. This is different from social entrepreneurship. A social entrepreneur may not be involved in a business at all, it could be just helping your neighbourhood, improving healthcare, helping people to do that in a new way.

What will you be focusing on over the next six months?

I have been over years spending more and more time on promoting social business, setting up social business, bringing social business to courses at universities, helping design social business institutes and universities...answering questions related with social business.

This is what I will continue to devote time to. Because now social business is spreading in many more countries - previously it was only in Bangladesh and one or two other countries - this will take up a lot of my time.

The recently elected young (36) mayor of Fukuoka city Mr. Soichiro Takashima declared the city of Fukuoka as a Social Business City, at the closing of the Asian Forum for Social Business that took place in the city from 21-23 July. The declaration took place at a signing ceremony between Mayor Takashima, Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and Professor Hiroto Yasuura, Vice President of Kyushu University. The city which was announced as a social business hub last year, has now formally adopted the title of "social business city" which would promote zero dividend businesses to solve social problems in the city of Fukuoka, and throughout Asia.

On the same day, the Kyushu University announced the setting up a new academic centre named as " Yunus Shiiki Centre for Research on Social Business". A prominent businessman Mr. Shiiki of the city funds this Centre. The ceremony took place in the presence of 1250 participants at the closing of the three-day forum.

The Asia Forum for Social Business had earlier been opened by Mayor Soichiro Takashima on 21 July and brought together many influential policy makers and businessmen of Japan. Following opening speech by Nobel Laureate Professor Yunus, a high level panel discussion took place addressed by founder and CEO of UNIQLO, Tadashi Yanai, and CEO of Yukiguni Maitake, country directors of Danone and Veolia , all of whom have joint venture social businesses in Bangladesh, and President of Kyushu University.

Professor Yunus has been exploring the possibility of joint venture collaboration between Japanese businesses to create social business in Bangladesh. Carlos Ghosn the highly admired CEO of Nissan and Renault came to the hotel to meet Professor Yunus on Tuesday 19 July, 2011. He discussed various options of social businesses. Professor Yunus met many top CEOs in a meeting organised by the President of NEC Corporation. Mr. Yuzo Kayama, a veteran and highly popular singer and actor in Japan, came to meet Professor Yunus at his hotel to extend support to his social business initiatives. Mr. Kayama described himself as a big fan of Yunus' work.

On Thursday, Professor Yunus was received by Mr. Taro Aso, former Prime Minister of Japan and Chairman of the Japan-Bangladesh Parliamentary League. He organized a workshop with Professor Yunus for the members of the Parliamentary group in the Diet Hall on social business, especially about its potential for the earthquake affected areas. Thirty two parliamentarians attended the session which was followed by a Q and A from the participating MPs. Following this session, Professor Yunus addressed a women's leaders meeting attended by more than 50 women business leaders and organizers of women organizations all of whom want to find ways to contribute to helping the families and victims of the great East Japan earthquake. They want to work closely with Yunus centre to design and implement their programmes. Some of them will visit Bangladesh to get good understanding of social business. They invited him to come back to Japan again to visit earthquake area of Tohoku with them to launch their programmes.

Friday July 15 marked the launch of the Nobel Laureate in Residence program at the University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM or National University of Malaysia) in Bangi, Selangor.

2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus accepted to become Laureate-in-Residence at UKM, and delivered the inaugural lecture to an audience of 2000+ faculty and students on Friday on the theme of social business as a way to solve society's most pressing problems.

The Vice Chancellor of the University, Dato Dr. Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin introduced Professor Yunus and the background to the program. The program was officially inaugurated by the Secretary General of the Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia.

The Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia initiated the Nobel Laureate Program in 2001, inspired by a vision of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed to generate a Malaysian Nobel Prize winner by 2020. The government has developed strategic plans to make this vision a reality and has allocated special resources to develop the necessary infrastructure and human capital for this purpose. The UKM's Nobel Laureate in Residence program is part of that overall strategy.

Bowles has met Nobel Peace Prize Winner Mohammad Yunus in Strasbourg to discuss social business, or enterprises that make a social impact but no loss or dividend.

Yunus believes the current capitalist stock markets do not cater for "the selfless dimensions of the people."

He wants a market to trade shares of social businesses. "An investor will come to this stock-exchange in order to find a social business, which has a mission to his or her liking, just as someone who wants to make money goes to the existing stock-market," says Yunus.

Yunus says the social stock market would need social ratings agencies, terminologies and reporting formats similar to capitalist markets.

Bowles says Europe is an obvious place for a social stock exchange and London could be the social stock centre. But she admits: "That could only happen if UK involvement in the project took-off."

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said after meeting Yunus on Wednesday that strengthening social business "is a concrete way to help the poorest of the poor."

Bowles says she hopes to attend an international conference on social business in Austria in November.

Source: http://www.gfsnews.com/article/2334/1/MEP_wants_EU__social_stock_exchange__in_UK/&print=1