Muhammad Yunus met young entrepreneurs making the world a better place

Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and over 60 other social businesses is currently on a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. This Saturday he spent three hours meeting seven handpicked young entrepreneurs from Sweden, Kenya, Austria, UK and China. The event was organized by GlobalFOCUS, Antonia Ax:son Johnsons Foundation for the Environment, and Ashoka.

Yunus who is invited to Stockholm by Bookhouse Editions shared insights for how to convince business leaders to see beyond maximization of profits and setting up social businesses. Something he has done with Danone, Veolia, Adidas and many others. The Nobel laureate from Bangladesh wants to reform the educational system by introducing social business as an alternative path for students to explore. He encouraged the gathered young entrepreneurs to be brave.

“You are extremely powerful. You have a world of information at hand and free tools at your fingertips. You need to ask yourselves what to do with this power”, said Yunus and continued: “Make a list of 20 problems in the world that makes you feel bad. Ask yourself if you can solve any of these problems by starting a social business. If the answer is yes, get to it.”

The young entrepreneurs Yi Yang, Evelina Lundqvist, Robyn Scott, Sebastian Lindström, Andreas Liljendahl, Estelle Westling and Maja Frankel felt happy and privileged after the conversation.

“I feel very inspired. Dr. Yunus is a true frontrunner especially by creating fruitful collaborations between businesses, civil society and the public sector. I left the room full of thoughts on how to build a system adapted to support social innovation”, says Maja Frankel, Founder of the social business “Framtidsboxen”.

For more information, contact the moderators:
Sven Heijbel, GlobalFOCUS, 0735-852643
Arne Forstenberg, GlobalFOCUS, 0736-871148