When the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus stated:
“I believe that we can create a world without poverty, because it is not the poor who created poverty”, it sounded like an utopia since he imagined that a world without poverty could be created through business activities.
Our current economic system is mainly responsible for the wealth pyramid, creating billions of people with little or no income. However, using the capitalistic system and business activities carried out by the poorest is subversive and very successful in overcoming poverty when we follow Prof. Yunus, social business concept, which is carried out by e.g. Grameen Bank or Grameen Danone. The concept of social business is simple but convincing. Social businesses are companies that have the objective to overcome poverty or other problems that threaten people in society. The goal of the company is not profit maximization. Investors in social businesses invest their money in business activities without receiving any dividends. Instead the profit of a social business stays within the company and is solely used to reinforce the social goal of the business. Furthermore social businesses pay market wage, and act it environmentally consciously. The Grameen Bank, the mother of social business, has distributed 8,7 Billion US$ in small loans with a 98% loan recovery, taking out no profit and empowering hundred thousands of people to overcome poverty and illiteracy in the second generation.
In social business, design plays a major role if we take Herbert Simonsdefinition of design seriously: “design is revising existing situations into preferred ones”. From this perspective each business creation is a design activity; each generation of new product or service is a design activity. Therefore, the question of design within the context of social business is manifold and interesting. As it seems Prof. Yunus’ main activities regarding design have been focused on the designing aspect of the business activity, which we could call business design, probably because he is an economic expert.
But there has to be more to it, since there is a huge awareness that environmental sustainability needs to be considered as a further important aspect of the design activity. Looking at many of the established products in the top tier of the wealth pyramid, it seems that the way products and services are designed today cannot be the future solution and cannot be sustained. We cannot generate the same carbon footprint for the world inhabitants as we do in the Western economies. We cannot use up the same amount of water resources in the upcoming economies as we still do in the western countries.
Therefore social business that has the goal to overcome poverty must be accompanied with conscious design activities, considering the half life of all products, considering the limited resources of the poorest, considering different lifestyles, considering the education of the consumer and considering the limited resources of this planet.
During the international design for social business designing conference in Milan, up to 60 international experts from various fields, representatives from the Grameen Creative Lab, multinational companies active in social business, IED, and other design schools as well as many international design experts, will be activelydesigning a new design philosophy and design agenda to frame and reframe design for social business. The organizers think and hope that it will be possible to have a clear notion how design, its methodology, its objectives need to change to design for a better world, without poverty, creating sustainable business activities, services and products.
The position papers will focus on different approaches to important issues in this area, representing the pluralism of approaches that are emerging in our different institutions and in professional practice.
