Yunus tells MIT grads they can 'change the world'

2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus told graduating students at MIT's 142nd Commencement exercises on Friday that they "represent the future of the world," and urged them to spend at least part of their time in coming years creating a whole new kind of businesses to help make the world a better place.

Nature cooperated with MIT's Commencement, but only after threatening to put a serious damper on the ceremony: The opening processional was delayed a few minutes by rain that had been pouring down through the early morning, but the skies cleared just in time for the ceremonies to proceed and for 2,335 graduates to receive their degrees.

Citing his own in experiences in going against all conventional wisdom in the pioneering creation of Grameen Bank in his native Bangladesh--the forerunner of what is now a multibillion-dollar worldwide trend in microlending--Yunus said such businesses have a fundamentally different philosophy than conventional companies that see their prime obligation as the maximization of profit.

What's needed, Yunus said, is to "reformulate the concept of a businessman"--not to replace the present model, but to offer another alternative that people can choose to follow. Such new-style businesspeople, he said, would have as their goal not maximum profit but "achieving some predefined social objective."

Creating such alternative socially conscious businesses, he said, "will bring a big change in the world." And for Yunus, this is not just talk, but a history of real action: In addition to his now-famous bank, he has already created partnerships to start a variety of such socially conscious businesses. For example, he created Grameen Phone to bring cell-phone service to Bangladesh and other developing countries, where most homes have no electricity, plumbing or telephone service.

Yunus has also helped to start "social businesses" including one to make yogurt that has added nutrients to help the millions of malnourished children in Bangladesh, another to provide a low-cost health-insurance program, a company to provide safe drinking water "in a sustainable way to all the people who are faced with a water crisis," an eye-care hospital, a shoe company and one to produce insecticide-treated mosquito nets to combat malaria.