Unleashing The Imagination Of Business

Unleashing The Imagination Of Business

- Enayetullah Khan

Social business/social enterprise. Perhaps not ten years ago, each of those terms would’ve been seen as equal oxymorons, one hopelessly propping up the other, waste gorging on waste, so bloated and so hopelessly bereftof the guile and imagination that the young find so fetching, that gets them hooked, makes them passionate, and then out of some spontaneous, unseen mixture of all those moments and interactions and comprehensions, you arrive at lifelong dedication.

Fast forward to the present day, and we’re in the French capital, Paris - specifically its leafy 19th arrondissement. The November air is cool and welcoming, and on a slightly raised dias from his surroundings at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, Muhammad Yunus is working his audience like a rockstar on his farewell tour. A rockstar yes, in his usual kurta, his glasses, the slightly Caribbean lilt to his accent, talking about the 99 percent and the 1 percent and what is ‘totally unacceptable’. The audience is diverse, yet a preponderance of young people is undeniable, hanging on his every word, in short, captivated.

In the intervening decade that we traversed, Md Yunus, the progenitor of microcredit and erstwhile ‘Banker to the Poor’, has given new meaning to the concept of social business, almost singlehandedly inspiring the movement that has now coalesced around a solid core of very distinct and defining features. Previously almost any act of charity or philanthropy - be it the work of an individual or a commercial organization - could get passed off as social business, which itself may just have been a byword for Corporate Social Responsibility. Now we know what exactly was missing in many of those early efforts - the right shepherd to lead the flock.