The first Global Grameen Meeting (GGM) on social business was held on November 7, 2009 at the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany with the aim of convening the partners and supporters of the Grameen Social Business movement to disseminate innovative ideas and share their experiences. The historic event was hosted by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Creative Lab, Germany.
A ten member delegation from Grameen including Professor Muhammad Yunus, Professor H.I.Latifee, Ms. Nurjahan Begum, and Heads of Grameen Kalyan, Grameen Telecom, Grameen Solutions and Yunus Center attended the event. Many representatives from different institutions, corporations, universities and foundations from around the world gathered in Wolfsburg on this occasion to get involved with Grameen in promoting and developing social business.
The purpose of this global meeting was to learn from the experiences of the already established Grameen Social Business projects and develop strategies to help the establishment of social business in more areas, which will benefit the poor. Presentations were made by Grameen Danone, Grameen Veolia, BASF Grameen and others on the experiences of Grameen social business they have been operating. Their experience sharing and inspirational speeches created a platform for interactions between social business promoters and potential investors and partners.
The GGM was a great success as the discussions led into concrete actions. On this occasion, a social business joint venture agreement was signed between Grameen Trust (GT) and Otto. Two Memorandum of Understandings were also signed between GT and Adidas and also between the Governor of Caldas, Colombia and GT during this time.
On November 8, 2009, just one day before the celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall, many Nobel peace prize winners including Professor Muhammad Yunus, international leaders and decision makers from industry, politics and civil societies from around the world gathered in Berlin at the Vision Summit under the motto "Another Wall To Fall". It was the first and only event of this kind so far, where many distinguished and dedicated individuals gathered with the idea of making the wall of poverty as well as the wall of ecosystem destruction fall in future through the promotion and development of social business.
The GGM was an integral part of the series of events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Many high-profile public figures including German Chancellor Angela Markel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Secretary Hilary Clinton, Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and French President Nicolas Sarkozy gathered with hundreds of thousands of people under the rain at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to celebrate the event. Professor Yunus in his speech urged all to work together to put poverty into museum.
On the occasion of this global gathering GT took the opportunity to meet its partners in order to promote the cause of poverty alleviation worldwide through microcredit and social business. Professor H.I.Latifee met the representatives from various organizations including UNHCR, UNICREDIT, KfW, Governor of Caldas, Grameen America, Inc., Grameen Creative Lab, Grameen Italia and Glasgow Caledonian University and discussed with them the issues related to future collaboration in the field of poverty alleviation.
Report by : Senti Chakma |
I spend my life sitting in boardrooms across from chief executives asking me to help them find that mythical beast, "the big idea". To them, I say this: "Small is the new big."
I feel this even more strongly after a recent visit to Bangladesh to meet Muhammad Yunus, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. I wanted to better understand the Grameen organisation, its micro-financing banking system, and its collaboration with the global French food group, Danone. There, I would see with my own eyes what social enterprise looks and feels like when the rubber hits the road. In recent years, Ideo's client base has increasingly been about designing not only for financial but also for social impact, and a visceral sense of the opportunities and realities was what I was looking to learn.
What hit me was the scale of the enterprise and how a small seed of an idea could be world-changing in its impact.
Prof. Yunus talks about scale in the context of poverty: "To me, poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flowerpot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on."
Grameen Bank gives tiny, collateral-free loans, mainly to women, along with huge amounts of trust that they will reliably pay the loans back. Small local branches are run by the "Grameen ladies", who take pride in making their own and their customers' loan repayments - treating everyone well and behaving, frankly, more professionally than many bank professionals.
Then there is the Grameen-Danone collaboration, which started after Frank Riboud, chief executive of the French company, met Prof. Yunus in 2005. Again, scale is an overwhelming theme: a tiny, "cute" factory (as Prof. Yunus describes it), a 10th the size of a regular Danone plant, which makes a batch-produced, nutritionally complete yoghurt product, using local milk, collected jug-by-jug in rural villages - as I saw for myself. It is sold door-to-door by Danone's yoghurt ladies and marketed cleverly by a man in a Danone-branded lion suit teaching children the value of a nutritious diet.
The phrases "business-to-business" and "business-to-consumer" are bandied about endlessly. This was better: this was person-to-person. It is a "big idea".
I can hear you thinking: "This is all well and good, but does it make money?"
My learning from the trip is that Grameen is not just a bank, but an engine of learning, meaning and purpose. It makes money but it also ignites employees' passions and teaches them new ways of working. In its collaboration with Danone, this philosophy is reaping more benefits for both than the purely financial.
In business today, chief executives are no longer just responsible for the "money bank account" of the company, but also for the purpose, people and learning "bank accounts" too.
By thinking in terms of such "bank accounts" and by taking a broader approach than simply focusing on the bottom line is how organisations of the future are going to thrive and grow.
The 'sense of purpose bank account' Today's organisations need a sense of higher purpose - the days of just making anything and selling it blithe-ly without care or consequence are being rejected en masse by consumers, who are increasingly behaving as good citizens that choose wisely what they consume. Creating products and services of meaning and impact with a philosophical backbone is going to be expected of every organisation soon. The 'talent bank account' The above applies equally as much inside organisations as outside them. A senior Danone executive told me: "Even the people in Paris who book our travel to Bangladesh feel like they are part of this project; they have pictures of the villages on their walls. This small initiative has revitalised our culture."
Employees want to work on things they believe in, in places that support those belief systems. Creating impact outside has huge impact inside.
The 'learning bank account' To me, this is the most critical account for a company to fill, and to keep filling. Danone's collaboration with Grameen is not solely to maximise profit. Rather, it sees it as the best way to learn how to get closer to its consumers - in the field through experimentation and prototyping, rather than intellectualising and theorising - and to bring that learning back into its core business and apply it there. It is learning-by-doing rather than death-by-discussion. As one client of mine puts it: "The future isn't going to be designed on an Excel spreadsheet."
Personally, I have long believed that not every idea has to be mega, mammoth, gargantuan or a billion dollar disruption. Often, the small, well-designed, intelligent and, most importantly, do-able ideas are infinitely better.
In conclusion, I would say only this: that elusive "big idea"? Keep it small.
Report by: Paul Bennett
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a63acc20-f5ac-11de-90ab-00144feab49a.html
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