Microcredit to “Building Social Business”
The NYT article says discusses this article with a question mark. They haven’t been paying attention to the state of Vermont, which has outlined what a socially responsible business is. They question profitability, when we should be moving toward a world in which “profit” has a different meaning. Rather than huge returns to investors (who in the high stakes games are just gambling, with their finger on the roulette wheel), return can be interpreted to be ‘benefit to the community.’ So yogurt to children isn’t a hugely profitable enterprise in the now rather distorted sense, but it is a high return for the health and benefit of a community. So maybe we get healthy communities we no longer have to beg charities to chuck huge amounts of relief money into where ‘high rates of return’ have sucked it out. We hope this book makes it big, and creates prosperous communities, not just individuals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02shelf.html?emc=eta1