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Samantha Kierath

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus made a big social impact by helping small businesses. In 1974, with the country battered by a string of catastrophic famines, natural disasters and a devastating war of independence, Yunus sowed the seeds for the microfinance movement by extending small loans to village women making handicrafts.
The loans were an alternative to the high rates charged by local moneylenders and enabled many women to make major improvements in their living conditions.
As an academic, Yunus had despaired that his conventional courses were not easing the poverty in Bangladesh. Through the creation of Grameen Bank, and later Grameen Phone, he was able to demonstrate that the key to overcoming poverty was to unleash the 'energy and creativity in each human being'. 
According to Yunus, charity simply creates dependency and eradicates the desire of a person to break through the barriers of poverty.
As Michael Strong, author of Be the Solution, says, who would have thought a quarter of a century ago that illiterate rural women working in groups of five had the resources to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars in micro loans? Strong contends that the success of the microfinance movement is an example of how entrepreneurs can spot potential in an otherwise unheralded situation and that self-sustaining businesses can be vehicles to solve the world's biggest problems. He advocates the rise of a new breed of businessperson,  'conscious capitalists' who can make the planet a better place if they have access to  property rights, the rule of law and economic freedom.
Strong and John Mackey, the chief executive of US organic retailer Whole Foods Market, are co-founders of an organisation called Flow,   which aims to liberate the 'entrepreneurial spirit for good', whether that is in health, politics, education or business.  
Mackey maintains that the best way to maximise profits over the long term is not to make them the main focus of the operation. Instead, the business must have a deeper purpose, and management's duty is to maximise the health and value of  its constituencies - from suppliers to employees and investors.  
Mackey says Whole Foods works towards its goal of selling the best-quality natural and organic products by training staff to please customers, organising hiring and procurement within teams and sharing salary information.
Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade, who created Adina, a US-based  producer of a traditional African hibiscus drink, is cited as another conscious capitalist. Wade founded her business with the goals of creating jobs, lifting Senegal's profile and supplying quality products.
Be the Solution is at its best looking at businesses like Whole Foods and Adina, but the author loses the reader at times by wandering  too far into self-help territory and  being overly critical of academics and US education.
Samantha Kierath is a freelance writer



Conscious capitalists look beyond profit