Muhammad
Yunus, who created microcredit, invented social business, and earned a
Nobel Peace Prize for his work in alleviating poverty, is one of today’s
most trenchant social critics. Now he declares it’s time to admit that
the capitalist engine is broken—that in its current form it inevitably
leads to rampant inequality, massive unemployment, and environmental
destruction. We need a new economic system that unleashes altruism as a
creative force just as powerful as self-interest. Is this a pipe dream?
Not at all. In the last decade, thousands of people and organizations
have already embraced Yunus’s vision of a new form of capitalism,
launching innovative social businesses designed to serve human needs
rather than accumulate wealth. They are bringing solar energy to
millions of homes in Bangladesh; turning thousands of unemployed young
people into entrepreneurs through equity investments; financing
female-owned businesses in cities across the United States; bringing
mobility, shelter, and other services to the rural poor in France; and
creating a global support network to help young entrepreneurs launch
their start-ups. In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new
civilization emerging from the economic experiments his work has helped
inspire. He explains how global companies like McCain, Renault, Essilor,
and Danone got involved with this new economic model through their own
social action groups, describes the ingenious new financial tools now
funding social businesses, and sketches the legal and regulatory changes
needed to jump-start the next wave of socially driven innovations. And
he invites young people, business and political leaders, and ordinary
citizens to join the movement and help create the better world we all
dream of.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS, a native of Bangladesh, was educated at Dhaka University
and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at
Vanderbilt University. In 1972, he became head of the economics
department at Chittagong University. He is the founder of Grameen Bank
and the father of microcredit, an economic movement that has helped lift
millions of families around the world out of poverty. He is also the
creator of social business. Yunus and Grameen Bank are winners of the
2006 Nobel Peace Prize, and Yunus won the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
2009, and the Congressional Gold Medal, 2013.
