this program is brought to you by Emory University thank you very much what a great honor to receive this president's medal and the distinguished company that you have just mentioned I'm very happy to be back here in Emory as a student I was not too far away from here I was in Vanderbilt in Nashville and occasionally I would come in here in Emory campus Because I had some friends here so my connection with dear goes way back it's a thrilling experience for me to come back to Atlanta which city with so much history that I
was very closely associated with because I came at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was at the peak and there I saw the role Atlanta played and all the leaders Dr Martin Luther King and everybody so I'm thrilled to come back to that City and I'm very happy that uh as Gary Hawk has mentioned the the friendship that is growing over the past few months because we're involved in something which he feel that Emory could help us and find a way to solve the problems that we have Healthcare and we got involved in many
diverse areas of healthcare trying to bring healthare to the poorest people in an affordable way and we look forward to to this friendship to grow over time and as I was being introduced about my work lots of generous words were used and that's what happens when you became good friends use a little bit exaggerated words that's a sign of friendship but what I did really was something very common place which Not Unusual at all only in one way I would say it is unusual and that became kind of a signature of my work I always
get involved with something which I don't know anything about and it never bothered me doing that and that's one reason how I got involved with banking I have no background in banking I don't know anything about banking uh but I bumped into it anyway and I never had any guilty feeling about it even uh reflecting on it probably I would say that was the best thing that I did because I didn't know anything about banking if I knew it probably I won't be able to do that that is the blessing of not knowing something you
can do anything you want and I did and it worked I was not trying to do any banking or anything of that sort I was just in lots of trouble in the country and I got caught up in that endless problems I was here doing my teaching in the Middle Tennessee State University in Murphysboro enjoying my work then Bangladesh gets into trouble Civil War uh s Liberation War lots of people got killed lots of devastations and I was trying to build up support for independence of Bangladesh trying to address the people in United States and
the members of the Congress government of United States changed their policy and recognized Bangladesh as an independent country as soon as Bangladesh became independent I resigned from my job and got back to Bangladesh right away Ser was a totally devastated country but at the same time feel very excited that now we have a country that we can build it in our own in the images of our dreams sometimes your dreams turn into nightmares and that's what happened in the case of Bangladesh because we quickly ran into terrible economic situation fine and here I'm teaching economics
in one of the universities there here the fine raging in the country out of desperation when you are desperate you do anything so out of desperation I thought I must do something and do something that I can handle so I started going to the Village next door to the University campus trying to see if I can be of any use to anybody in that Village even for a day I thought at least I'll feel a little bit better that I'm doing something to be useful and that was the beginning and it led me to other
kind of things started discovering the lone sharking in the village tiny loans given to the poor people and in the process they take the whole control of their life everything taken over by the lone shards seeing it in a very concrete ways I became more and more Curious how does it happen why people do that so I wanted to know more about it so as a curious person I want wanted to make a list of people who is borrowing from whom how much money they borrowed what was the reason and my when my list was
complete there were 42 names in the list the total amount they borrowed was $27 and I couldn't believe that people have to suffer so much for so little and I was totally shocked then suddenly it came to my mind that the problem is very difficult but the solution is so simple and I immediately took that solution I took the money from my pocket I gave this money according to the list and asked them to return the money to the loan shars and my idea my idea was that if if they return the money loone shs
cannot bother them anymore cannot touch them anymore and they will be free all it needed was $27 I did that I thought this is one of the many other things that I did but I didn't realize that it will grow so big but seeing the reaction among the people in the village it led me to another Direction they were so excited that something like this can happen then I asked myself if you can make so many people so happy with such a small amount of money why shouldn't you do more of it so I wanted
to do more of it the next idea came why don't I connect these poor people in the village with the bank which is located in the campus I know these people so I went to the bank I thought it's is just a simple thing and such a logical thing they will take it see how innocent I was about banking the bank manager said no way bank doesn't lend money to the poor people I said why not because they are not credit worthy I said how do you know said everybody knows they are not credit worthy
I said I don't know so it went on it has no solution he will not give up and I won't give in so the confrontation became more and more T he suggested I can't do anything you better go up above the letter talk to my senior people in the banking maybe they will find their way I can't give anything to you so from then on I just go on talk knocking at everybody's door trying to explain everybody gives me the same answer it cannot be done it went on for months finally I learned something about
Banking and used it I said why didn't you take me as a guarantor because you said if there is somebody who can guarantee guarantee the loan there is a provision in your rule that you can Lear money I said take me as a guarant so this time I spoke their language so they cannot just really throw me away from their office but they took their time studying me studying my finance finally after 2 months they agreed so that was the beginning I was very excited that finally I can do this and I took the money
from Bank signed every single Paper started giving the money and the bank manager said say goodbye to your money this money is never going to come back get ready to pay it back I said I have no idea whether it's going to work or not I never did it before but I'll try so I tried I came up with simple rules to make it easy for people to pay back and it worked and that's what happened after that just trying to expand the next Village on the next Village every time it works now when it
grew bigger and bigger people kept asking me how did you design the system you must have done lots of research doing that I said no I'm an impatient man I don't do research I just go ahead and do it so I got kept doing it and for me it became very easy and it were lots of fun too and easy and fun all I I have to do when I need a little process little procedures how to do it I don't know anything about it I just look at the conventional Banks how they do it
when I learn how they do it all I have to do is to do the opposite very easy way never [Laughter] failed conventional Banks could go to the rich because their principle is the more you have the more you get that's their principle so they are always trying to find someone who has more and the most I just reverse that principle I go to the people who have little or nothing and you have nothing you have the highest priority very simple and that's what we have been doing conventional banks in Bangladesh always reach out to
men more than 99% of their borrowers are men we reversed it we went to the women even today when we have over 8 million borrowers in Bangladesh with income in Bank 97% of them are women see how reverse process works conventional Banks want collateral without collateral unless you have lots they will not give you anything that's how the whole system is built we reversed it we said no collateral we are looking for people who has nothing so why worry about collateral so we dismissed the whole idea of collateral when you you don't have collateral then
something else happens you you don't need any lawyers you need the lawyer so that you can keep the collateral for you now that you don't have collateral you don't need lawyers so we are a Col we are a lawyer free [Laughter] [Applause] bank and conventional banks are owned by rich people you look around it's a Le people who own the man we reversed it we made the poor people own the bank and the poor women own the bank so borrowers of gramine Bank are the owners of gramine bank so individually they are very poor but
collectively they own this huge Bank in Bangladesh that's another one so we go on everything do just the other way conventional banks will ask lots of questions before they give you a loan about your past history about your credit records about your turn whatever businesses you have made or whatever experience you gathered we made it simple we said forget about the past we are not interested in the people's past we are interested in the future of the people so let's concentrate on the future and poor people always have troubles they may have some mistakes there
were some trouble in the past don't go on kind of digging it up and make their life more complicated just move on wherever they are experience what experience they don't have any experience nobody gave an opportunity to have experience so who I talk about experience just move on from the point that she wants to take the next first step that's what we do so we can keep on adding items after items on that list conventional banks are not interested in the children of their clients but we are very much gramine bank is very much interested
in the children of the borrowers of gramin man it almost became an obsession with us we make it as a part of our service Ro the condition of assignments of our staff to make sure the children of the families that work for must be in school remember this women that I'm talking about they are totally illiterate never went to school never never can write their write or read or anything their husbands don't read and write it's a repetition of the same history years after years generation after Generations which is repeated and illiteracy continued with them
so we thought this is our opportunity to make a break in that so the second generation in Gamin families would be different they will be educated all of them not a single person should be missed and as a result we could achieve that goal having all the children of gramine families in school and we take lot of Pride when students come up with brilliant results in schools it's amazing kind of experience is a thrilling experience to see a little kid coming from a totally illiterate fam going for the first time in history of that family
going to school and you expect that child will be sitting in the back you expect that child will be not speaking at all not participate in the class activities but the reality is so different you see this little kid coming at the top of the class it's amazing kind of experience you should it it kinds of gives you Goosebump seeing these kids not every one of them but some of them top of the class so we thought we should celebrate that the fact that something like that can happen we introduce a scholarships to celebrate that
take this little kids in front of the whole village give them scholarships real cash for the family for the child because of the performance he or she has made and the family feels absolutely thrilled something like that can happen to that family and then we thought we can take this children we're hoping we're praying that these children somehow complete their primary education don't drop out don't get lost but again reality was more strange than we thought they did get through the primary education but didn't stop there they continued continued to the high high school and
then first time we see some of the kids are coming to the colleges but the college is a difficult place you need money expenses parents don't have that so iMed immediately we sat down and came up with an idea as you education loan give them education loan so he started giving Education Loans so that money doesn't stop them from going to higher education they came all the way so now we have students coming to higher education some of them becoming Engineers doctors professionals some of them completing their PHD in this trip while I'm in the
USA I was visiting one University campus I after I spoke someone came out he said he said I want to introduce myself go ahead I said I'm from Bangladesh and I'm my mother is a borrower of gramin bank I came I'm studying here for my PhD so I was again this is a great moment for me that not only there now I see here they're coming into universities studying here right now there are more than 50,000 students on Education Loans in medical schools engineering schools universities everywhere and one of the issue that we're discussing with
the m to create nursing colleges so that we can take the young girls who are getting educated now from the families of gramine bank which is a poor family by definition take them into nursing colleges gramine Bank give them Education Loans and they became world class nurses become professional persons not only she transforms herself it transforms her family it transformed the whole village because a girl from the village becoming a nurse working around the world it's possible and there are hundreds of thousands and millions of these young girls who can become professional people or all
they need is opportunity so I thought nursing college would be good opportunity to produce a large number of them not only you doing the healthcare a service to the healthcare but also transforming the whole community of young girls in Bangladesh now as I go from villages to Villages when I meet people trying to kind of get the reality check what's happening one thing is numbers one thing is real people as I go around I meet this woman who has joined gramine Bank 10 years back 15 years back 20 years back and I see her daughter
along with her this young girl looks exactly like her mother and I think she must be helping her mother in her business now that she has has expanded her business when I asked her what did you do what are you doing now she said I'm a medical doctor I practice in the neighboring town I heard that you're visiting our village so I came to see you I never met you before so I'm very happy to see her very happy to see her mother and in in a situation like that always a thought flashes through my
mind her mother could have been a doctor too there's nothing wrong with her mother but her mother remained illiterate all her life not because she has se something lacking in her but something societ never gave her an opportunity to go to school to learn her alphabets now one tiny little thing happened in that family's life the mother could join in a group of other women to take loans from gramine bank and she changed her life and she sent her daughter to school she got education loan she became a medical doctor so you always come up
with the question again and again what creates poverty is poverty is in the person or poverty is something is imposed from outside on the person then seeing the reality of life as you see every day you are totally convinced the poverty is not created by the poor people poverty is created by the system that we have built by the institutions that we have created and maintain those institution sing the glory of those institutions the policies that we pursue Concepts that we have designed and we universities play a very important role in it that's what created
poverty so it is in externally imposed on the person so if you accept that proposition that means if you change our system the institutions the concepts the policies nobody will be a poor person but the seed of poverty could be extracted from those places and it will not be transferred to the people and people will be completely normal human being each human being is pecked with unlimited potential no matter where he or she lives this is part of being a human being the enormous amount of creativity enormous amount of Ingenuity that each person has respecting
to the person but the unfortunate fact is society doesn't give the opportunity to even to know that she has the gift the wonderful gift that she's carrying with her let alone have the opportunity to unwrap that gift find out what I got and that's what keeps her the way she is she doesn't know she accepts it what everybody else tells her so in the process the entire mankind is deprived all the creativity and energy and the Ingenuity that is lost by not being able to unleash that when we talk about microcredit when we talk about
gramine Bank we talk about tiny loans and that tiny loans you wonder how how this tiny loan can change a person what what is that it's not the amount of loan it is that loan becomes a kind of a tool instrument to make the opening of that gift and the women themselves get surprised that oh I can do that I can earn money I have the capacity everybody thought everybody told me that you are nothing you don't know anything I know something I earned a dollar today because I made the work make it work and
that excites her she wants to do this next thing she starts planning her mind starts working so far her mind didn't work because it was not necessary her mind to work suddenly you hear that sound ticking sound in your mind because now you're calculating what do you do next what do you next and that's the important thing that is the I think that's the magic of what micro it does make you feel that you are important you can take responsibility of your own life you can be in the driving driverite of your life you're not
at the mercy of other people today after 34 years of gramine bank we have as I said 8 million more than 8 million Borrowers mostly women 97% women we lend out over $100 million a month in tiny amounts after all these years still it's tiny amount tiny amount averaging less than $200 what what a transformation it makes in them the bank is owned by them and Bank never takes money from outside so whenever you hear about microcredit sometimes you immediately conclude okay banks give tiny loans to the poor people that's microc credit and I hope
now you realize what microc credit is because that's why I was saying we do everything the opposite way it's not just the same bank giving tiny loan that doesn't make it microcredit it can look like microcredit but it is is not microc credit cuz micro credit means an entire different system within that system you build yourself up the whole whole system is dedicated to build her up and build her second generation up and we don't need money from outside somehow microcredit means oh I have to give some money to them no you don't have to
give money to them all this money we lend out over a billion doar a year we don't take any money from anybody not from the government not from Bank not from International agency we don't need to because as a bank we can remain self-reliant self-sufficient anytime we want all we do is take deposits just like any other bank do we take deposits and lend this money to the poor people in the place in the area and we have plenty of money because people keep their money with our bank so it's a self-reliant system today it
has a spread in many countries almost every single country in the world we even started running our own bank bank like it's not bank because we don't have a banking license in New York City call it gramine America we were challenged that it don't work in this country because poverty is different here than in Bangladesh as of course is different our people are different I said no that's not true people are people no matter what they are so we took the challenge let's do it let's figure it out on the ground that will be shown
rather than just debate on the with the words so we started two years back in Queens New York and it worked beautifully we do exactly the way we do it in Bangladesh and today after 2 years we have over 2,000 borrowers in both in Queens and Brooklyn all of them are women average Loan in New York City guess how much $1,500 it's amazing to see what 15, $1,500 mean to people they take it so seriously they work so hard and they're so happy that they got this money to do something they couldn't do for years
a home cleaner she used to work for home house cleaning company cleaning company she was he lost her job but 15 years back so she was telling me that I thought what can I do with myself without a job so I waited and waited then finally thought why don't you do it myself I know friends I will tell I'll clean your house and give me some money so I've been doing this for this 15 or 13 years and then I get this loan from Ramin program for the first time in my life I have a
carpet cleaning machine all this time all these years I'm cleaning it by my hand now I don't have to use my hand to her is such an important thing so now we just opened another branch in Omaha Nebraska and doing exactly the same thing we are now invited in San Francisco to do the same thing the point I'm making the need is everywhere in this country which you can imagine the most sophisticated banking system in the world but you have payday loans everywhere that doesn't tell a good story about banking system you open a newspaper
you open any magazine you have advertisement for payday loans we started working against the loone Sharks now loone sharks advertise their business we have no solution to that because nobody's interested interest rate in a Payday Loans would be 50% 500% 1,000% it goes on pawn shops check Cushing companies so it the point I was making that it is the institutions which help which pushed people in One Direction if we had redesigned that institutions so that everybody has access to that service world would be different 34 years back the bank manager in the campus of the
University that I was teaching he told me poor are not credit worthy that's why they don't lend money to the poor people and along the way I saw real situation is different I asking question should the banks tell that PO people are not credit worthy or should the people tell them that they are not people Worthy [Applause] it's just a coincidence that we started the program in uh jackon height in Queens in 2008 January we didn't plan it that way but it happened that way and that's the year when financial crisis came by the time
financial crisis came when the big Banks were shaking sh big banks are collapsing this program in New York City is flourishing no collateral nothing so who is a credit worthy person but it's still conventional Banks remains conventional Banks they don't open their door I said financial crisis is an excellent opportunity excellent opportunity to redesign things so that we don't repeat the same things we have been doing over and over again and creating these problems why don't you go and redesign it so the banking system becomes an inclusive system so nobody's denied from that in gramine
bank we lend money to the Beggars we have more than 100,000 beggars in our program very simple idea we tell them that as you go from house to house begging would you carry some merchandise with you some cookies some candies some toys for the kids it's not an art shuttering idea when we tell them look you are going there anyway it's not extra work for you and they realize that yes it's no extra work we go there anywhere so we said we give you the money to buy all the stuff that people like would like
to buy from you so you give people options whether they would like to buy something from you or they would like to give some charity some food some money so they that you can have something to eat it's up to them to decide they may do both that's okay so you're in The Winning Side anyway they liked it in the beginning I thought maybe there'll be 2,000 3,000 Beggars and we'll see how they do it became such a popular program by now just a four-year-old program by now more than 18,000 Beggars have stopped begging completely
and remaining 90,000 or so I would say they are part-time Beggars sometimes begging sometimes selling they're very smart too they will tell you right away which house is good for begging and which house is good for selling when I first learned about it I was so amused I told my colleagues see they never been to Business Schools but they understood the market segmentation so why can't we create a system which is open to everybody can you now say that poor people are not credit worthy no way they are the better most credit worthy people will
see on this planet because all over the world and the concept I said the fault that we have created the the flaws that we have on our system one flaw is in the concept of business and I've been shouting about it all the time that we have to redesign that concept there's only one concept of business business to make money and they make it more clear they stated more clearly profit maximization is the mission of business all we have to do is to make money that's what we we came this planet from make money doesn't
make sound doesn't sound right at all human beings are not onedimensional being we are not moneymaking machines we are not robots but the theory has made it so because some theoreticians said all you do in business is make money so we are making money our success are measured by how much money we made is this what the success of a human life how much money I made or how much contribution I made to the world I don't know you have to figure it out but to me this one doesn't look right that all we do
in our life is make money making money is a means and making money is an end doesn't make sense what what do I do when I go leave this money behind didn't do anything with it so I'm saying that is a wrong interpretation of a human being in the whole theory of Economics human being is much bigger being multi-dimensional being you have to treat the whole human being within the theory theory is not something to make me fit into the theory Theory should fit into me other way but not the one that we have we
are trying to fit into the theory we are as a human being we are selfish of course we are selfish because that came from our self- protection we want to protect ourselves and that's the selfishness all about but as a human being at the same time we are selfless that selfless part is not entertained within economics why why can't we have the whole human being together so I'm suggesting why don't you build businesses on the basis of selflessness in the selfish business everything is for me nothing for others in the selfless business everything for others
nothing for me it's by decision not that somebody forced me I don't want to take money from this because I want to change the world with this business and I can do that when I talk about it people say ah no no it's not right people want something why should they be in business if they're not making money I said you think that way because that's how you are told that's how your mind is made you grew up with this idea now you cannot see anything else our eyes now wearing the profit maximizing glasses all
the time we see the world with profit maximizing glass we cannot think any other kind of world I said why don't you take off that glasses for a while and put on that selfless business glasses and see the world is completely different and I'm calling this selfless business as social business and then I started creating those business myself so that people I can demonstrate I thought demonstration gives a better understanding of the idea than just talking about it and people start looking at it particularly when we did a joint venture with a giant company called
donon which is the milk product company French company so we created a joint venture company social business company gramine donon food company in Bangladesh what we do in this social business we produce yogurt for a very specific reason because social business has to address a social problem so that it can be eliminated so we designed this social business to eliminate the malnutrition among the children of Bangladesh Bangladeshi children has very high level of malnutrition nearly 50% or half the children of Bangladesh are malnourished most of them are severely malnourished so their life starts with a
very poor health and get worse as they grow up what we're doing we create yogurt put all the micronutrients which are missing in the children put it in the yogurt and make it very cheap so that even the poorest child can afford it it's a very delicious yogurt and that's what the contribution of donon because if we had made this yogurt and put all those micronutrients this will be terrible medicine kind of thing but they they have hidden the taste of medicine completely children love it now we have the we created the first plant about
3 years back now we have over the full production of that uh plant and children are eating and we have gain Global Alliance for improved nutrition this is a international research institution based in Geneva we invited them to monitor the health impact of this yogurt on the children of Bangladesh what they eating so that they can they can tell us that whether it's really happening or not after all if it is not happening that's not a social business social business has to have impact and in because it's a social business both Danon and gramin agreed
they will never take any profit out of this company because nothing for us everything is for others we can take back our investment money nothing beyond that and that becomes a social Business If This Yogurt Company was a profit making company will be asking the CEO of this company at the end of the year how much money we have made this year why can't we make more money out of this company what are you doing next year but since gramin Danon is a social business we ask our CEO at the end of the year how
many children got out of malnutrition this year because that is the objective of the company and what are we doing to make sure more children get out of malnutrition next year this is the question We'll be asking coo and the COO will be working throughout the year to achieve those goals but maintaining that it recovers his cost if you lose money it's not a business so you cannot lose money it's a non-loss non-dividend company with a social objective if we now repeat this company again and again throughout Bangladesh and really if the yogurt helps overcome
nutrition all these children will become a healthy children we can solve it then came water another company violia a big water company in the world maybe the largest water company in the world a French company they came to us that we would like to do a social business we like your idea so we created gramin violia water company to bring very clean water in the Villages water is problem everywhere and our problem is very unique we have arsenic problem with very high level of arsenic in our water 45 million people of Bangladesh which is one
almost one3 of the population of Bangladesh drink poison every day their children drink poison every day arsenic very high contamination no solution so we said we will bring the solution we'll create a company as a social business and bring the water you pay and Company recovers the cost and you take it from there so now that company's oper ating in Bangladesh and you're very happy with it another company came BF is a large Chemical Company German company want to do social business we discussed and we have two social business one for producing micronutrients in s
so that many of our women are malnourished at the same time lot of uh iron deficiency so try to to overcome these problems with this 15 micronutrients such so this would be one social business another one producing moscon Nets impregnated mosquiton against malaria and Deni so that mosquitoes cannot bite you make it very cheap as a social business all you want to do is to cover your cost you are not worried about making tons of money and come up with ideas how to make cheaper for poor people and make a little money for the rich
people so that you can make the Poor People's mosquet still cheaper so this is what we're doing another company I'll just to stop listing all these companies because it's interesting each one of them they invited me to come to their headquarter talk to their staff and colleagues as I was visiting Germany so I went there this is Adidas the sports Weare company shoe company and I met the CEO and he said we are very interested in your concept you'd like to do something social business what should we do I said I have no credy idea
but we can discuss about it I said why don't you start with a statement of commitment he said like what I said maybe something like this nobody in the world should go without shoes as a shoe company it's our responsibility to produce shoes affordable to even the poorest person he looks at me he said that's a tall order I said you can take it because you're Adidas I said can we can I discuss it with my colleagues because I alone cannot make this decision this is a big one I said you take your time so
so he sent me around to see in a guided tour all the facilities all the museum of sports and history of the company and so on and then during the lunchtime We Gather again with his colleagues and him he said sits next to me he said my colleagues have asked me one question so that I can raise it with you how cheap should it be to make it affordable to the poorest person I said I have no idea but why don't you make it say under $1 he says you a very difficult [Laughter] man I
said no I'm trying to tell you what it should work so they took it very seriously ever since they are working they're sending their Engineers their designers their Market people in Bangladesh talk to the women in poor women in villages of Bangladesh their children their husbands what kind of sho shoe they would like what kind of price they would like to pay how much they paid for the shoes they have ever bought ET etc etc and they have designed it after six months of this research and running around and now next month they will bring
10,000 pairs of this these shoes to for test marketing to get the reaction from the people who would like to wear it and so on and after they get the reaction they will redesign again and put it in and then set up a plant to produce this shoes here as I I'm talking is not for fashion it's not for Comfort this is a vital Health Care intervention because many of our diseases attack us through the skin of our feet you'll see blotted the stomach of children you see this in the newspaper or television warms hook
worms particularly kills children because they they penetrate into your body and adults too M much of our malnutrition come from the disease of parasitic diseases so if you have a shoes if you have shoes wearing they cannot enter your body so you protect yourself your children your family from these parasitic diseases and this is one you at least one disease you have taken care of by doing that so you can create lots of this social business businesses now people ask me here what kind of social business can we do here we have nothing I said
you have a lot of things anything which bothers you can be designed as a social business right away so like what I said look at this welfare if I can create a business a social business to take say five people out of welfare that would be a wonderful thing you created a business to take five people out of welfare in the process what you have done you have created a seed a miracle seed now this seed can be planted over and over again each time you plant five people get out of Ware and then 10
people will get out of 10 million people will get out of welfare very simple because you PL you design that seed in the process it will be improved it will be redesigned refined and so on make it more easy unemployment I said if you want to do this you can address the issue of unemployment you can design a beautiful social business to help five people get out of unemployment how or you can start as say just for the sake of it a grocery store a corner grocery store we'll do that where five people can work
but why don't the money makers do that they're not setting up a grocery store here here because money makers will put this investment in grocery store here if they're assured that the minimum return on their investment will be 15 sorry 25% and above only then they will come if they do not do not have guarantee or do not have expectation they will have that kind of return on their investment they will not be interested because they'll put their money some someplace else but as a social business person you're not interested in the return on your
investment you are interested in solving the problem of five unemployed people your objective is different so you create it if you get 1% return on your investment that money stays with the company you don't take it you you are never taking any dividend out of this company you are very happy that you created five jobs for these people and in the process again you created a seat so each social business is a seat anybody can do that a young person can do that a retired person can do that a business executive can do that it's
a street person can do that it's a question of exercising your mind and then you solve the problem problem of unemployment problem of drug addiction problem of suicide Problem whatever said are you can you do everything I said I don't know but if you put our mind into it somebody will come up with the great idea it's a question of using the ideas that's all we have enormous technology in the world you are amazed by the way the fast growth of that technology every day every moment it's growing that technology what use we make our
technology all this fantastic power that we create every moment we use it for making money if we could use the same technology that which is continually expanding technology to solve the problem of unemployment solve the problem of diseases solve the problem of environment in a social business way these problems will simply disappear but we don't do that because we are told only thing you do is make money so we have to go back reengineer the design of the architecture which says people do only this we say no this will be a world of two businesses
two kinds of businesses business of making money at the same same time social business business of changing the world removing all the problems that we made already created all the problem that we have we will remove them once we redesign these Concepts and policies and the institutions nobody has to be a poor person nobody has to be a sick person because it is not part of a human being so we bring the real human being out and then let him and and let her unleash herself and himself see what happens to the world it will
be a very different kind of world it's all up to us to decide we don't have to wait for the theoreticians to write in the textbook there are two kinds of businesses if I decide there are two kinds of business that's enough for me and I'll do both nobody can stop me it's my decision and all of us can do that and we can create things ourselves within the university we can create groups some of them call themselves gramine creative Labs many universities have created gramine creative Labs just put together exercise design put them on
the website this is a beautiful design of a social business you're saying that once you can design it somebody will invest in it that's it and we are even creating talking about creating social business funds so that anybody has a great idea here is an investment not for making money to make it happen show us if it happens then we have discovered something and there are many initiative in creating social business funds and we are talking about creating social stock market so that I can buy a share of a social business invest my money into
it it's possible so we have to expand our ideas that we are at the center of solving the problems not we are just dumping all the problems on the shoulder of the government say you solve it we are busy making making money we don't have no time that's no solution if we get involved it will get solved in the process we can create a new world where nobody will be a poor person there no need to then at that time I say why don't we create poverty museums because there's no poverty in the [Applause] world
and children will be asking what is this poverty you talk about then we'll take them on Sunday to see the poverty Museum this is what is used to be and they will be shocked and they will promise to themselves they will never let them come again come back again thank you very much the preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University
