Category Archives: Social Entrepreneur

Boston Globe interview with Prof. Yunus

Follow up to my post on Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. The Boston Globe published an interesting interview with Prof. Yunus while he was in Boston to speak at the MIT commencement. I have excerpted one of the questions below. You can find the rest of the interview in their article online at A really unconventional lender

You have a different view of how capitalism should work. How do you think capitalism should be reformed?

Capitalism is very narrowly defined in the way we practice it. You ignore everything else but money making. And by ignoring the other parts of human beings – concern for other people, concern about the planet, willingness to make a difference in the world – we’ve created a distortion. So I’m suggesting there’s not one type of business model, but two types. One takes care of making money, which can lead to happiness. The other happiness comes from the other type of business, which is to do good to other people. You cover your costs – it’s not charity. Charity money has only one life – once you use it, it goes. Use the money in a social business, then it has an endless life. It’s recycled. It never disappears.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Motomen make Wireless Internet happen

A couple of years ago, I met with Amir Hasson Alexander, an enterprising young man from MIT with a vision of bringing internet connectivity to the 2 Billion underserved in the farthest regions of the world. Using buses equipped with WiFi. Amir’s company, United Villages  (www.unitedvillages.com)  and his enterprising band of ‘Motomen, provides web content to computers with no internet connection. A small box, with an antenna, onboard the buses or motorcycles, communicates with the rural computers. Every time a WiFi bus/motorcycle rolls by the village, the web content on the village kiosk computer is updated and email delivered. In remote locations with no wired connections, villagers can communicate – albeit asynchronously – with their cousins in faraway lands, order parts, lodge complaints, or review the status of their claims. With every kiosk Hasson’s company makes the world a smaller place.

Click here to see a CNN video of Amir’s Cambodian Motomen scooting around on their bikes

Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Social Business and the Future of Capitalism

Earlier this year, Nobel laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus was the invited guest speaker at MIT’s 142nd commencement. In his prepared remarks to the students he outlined how he started microcredit thirty plus years ago from a simple desire to free villagers near his university in Chittagong from the penalizing interest that they paid to moneylenders.

Today his organization, Grameen Bank, has grown to cover 7.5 million borrowers in Bangladesh, 97 percent of them women. From this beginning he has expanded to provide services and products in a number of areas ranging from health insurance, to affordable cell phone service with Grameen Phone to renewable energy solutions through Grameen Shakti.

Drawing from his successes with these businesses, Prof. Yunus has refined an overarching social business philosophy that he recently published in his latest book “Creating a World Without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism“. Continue reading

Ashoka Support Network

Writing a blog about Social Entrepreneurship would be incomplete without writing about Ashoka – a Washington based non profit started by Bill Drayton in 1980 that virtually coined the term “Social Entrepreneur”.

Ashoka has built a worldwide network that has identified and supported over 1900 social entrepreneurs in 60 plus countries. They follow a rigorous nomination and review process to identify leading social entrepreneurs around the world.  Ashoka looks for candidates with innovative new ideas, reviews their professional and ethical backgrounds, conducts in-depth interviews and determines the potential national impact of the innovator’s ideas. It is a great network of leaders in various social fields from all parts of the world. Continue reading

Forum for Social Entrepreneurs: ForSE 2008

In 2007, I helped found an annual conference on Social Entrepreneurship in partnership with Boston University called the Forum for Social Entrepreneurship or ForSE for short.

We founded the Forum for Social Entrepreneurs (ForSE):

  • To bring together social innovators with leading business professionals, investors, donors, government officials, academics, and students
  • To facilitate the sharing of new technology and business ideas along with hard-earned management learnings
  • To foster informed discussion and action on new social venture concepts.

We feel no place is better suited to host such a conference than Boston. Boston is a center for a new breed of social entrepreneur. It is home to nearly a fifth of the Fast Company Social Capitalist awardees as well as dozens of pioneering social enterprise investors. Continue reading