Nobel laureate Yunus says the global crisis a chance to change business

“You can start small and give it a try, find out if it works or if it doesn't work,” he said, and share the results across what Faber said was now “a global network of people thinking along these lines.”

Faber quoted Danone founder Antoine Riboud as stressing “there could not be long-term wealth creation without social progress.”

Peter Graf of SAP warned meanwhile that if they failed to act on global issues, there was “a danger of companies losing their social license to do business.”

He called the threat “hugely underestimated as the public gets more and more aware of the crises that we are facing.”

Danone plans to launch a project to have 300 people deliver fresh dairy products to Paris area shops on electric-powered tricycles.

The drivers would be ex-convicts or others faced with marginal living situations and the plan would cut carbon dioxide emissions from delivery vans withdrawn from circulation, he said.

In Germany, Reitz is experimenting with business loans to 15-year-old school children to show them they could later be self-employed.

Making cakes, candles and music CDs allowed German and immigrant youth to “start a small business and create an identity,” he said.

“You can create a job for others, you don't have to wait to have a job,” Reitz stressed as the eurozone struggles to reduce chronic unemployment.

Yunus believes social businesses can unite public sector and charity goals with the dynamics of an enterprise.

“If you can design businesses, bring the power of business, and the technology of businesses and the creativity of businesses to bear on a problem, maybe we can solve it,” he said.

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