Micro business introduced to Europe

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus brought on Saturday ideas for creating micro "social businesses'' from Bangladesh to Germany, with backing from several of the world's leading corporations.

Yunus, who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his development of micro-credits that allow poor people to start their own companies, said the global economic crisis offered the world "an opportunity to reflect and redesign'' ways of doing business.

"What is missing?'' he asked a press conference in Wolfsburg, northern Germany, the home of Europe's biggest carmaker, Volkswagen, which hosted the event.

"All business does not have to be done only to maximize profit, there can be other businesses, businesses aimed exclusively at solving problems.''

As well as VW and Yunus' Grameen Social Business initiative, food giant Danone, global water group Veolia, sportswear company Adidas and professional software giant SAP were also represented.

Yunus argued that companies that do not aim to make a profit _ a principle of social businesses _ can still make a difference in a world facing problems such as unemployment or chronic dependence on welfare.

"If you can find out how to solve the problem of six unemployed people, you have designed something which can solve the problem of six million unemployed people, because the same thing can be repeated,'' he explained.

"The issue is how fast we can get out of poverty,'' both in the developing world and in advanced economies, Yunus added.

Danone representative Emmanuel Faber described a project in Paris to have around 300 people deliver fresh dairy products to shops using electric-powered bicycles.

The workers would be former prisoners or otherwise faced with marginal living situations, and the scheme would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from normal delivery vans and increase distribution of Danone products, he said.

It was an example of "new ways of working that social business has driven into the mainstream way of Danone doing business,'' Faber explained.

"If you're thinking about your company for the next quarter, you should not enter social business, if you are thinking about your company for the next 50 years, you should definitely be thinking about it,'' he said.