Professor Mohammed Yunus (Bangladesh, 1940) is formally recognized as the principal promoter of an idea that previously seemed to be utopic in corporate behavior: the existence of a company that invests money not to make a profit, but to achieve social and environmental goals. This concept is known as Social Business. The formal definition of Social Business was made by Professor Yunus in his book “Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism”, which recognizes three principal requirements:
 
First, it is necessary that a company focuses on improving social objectives such as health, education, poverty, environment and climate change. Then, the company needs to be a property of the poor or disadvantaged people because its dividends needs to return to them and create opportunities to bring them out of poverty. Finally, that the company has a non-profit distribution in which investors may not, after recovering the amount invested, take profit out of the enterprise. Moreover, the investors have the responsibility to participate continuously in the enterprise in order to assure its subsistence.
 
The best example of the coherence and realism of this idea is The Grammen Bank in Bangladesh which is lead by Professor Yunus. This bank was founded in 1976 based on the conviction that microcredit could be used as a tool for poverty reduction. This huge opportunity was not recognized by other banks because their goals were different; while Grammen Bank works in search of social goals, the others only search afor profit. Furthermore, Dr. Yunus believed in giving the poor the chance to access credit that they can repay with an interest included, making The Grammen Bank a viable business model – today The Grammen Bank´s interest reaches 20% with a repayment index of 98% plus-. The current success of this bank and the expansion of Dr. Yunus´ ideas around the world confirm the viability of Social Business thinking.
 
Even more, Professor Yunus postulates that in the future the coexistence of profit-maximizing enterprises and social-benefit-maximizing enterprises will be possible. At this point, a social business will operate much like a profit-maximizing enterprise with the difference that its shareholders will re-accumulate their initial investment and use it for the benefit of society. This new idea is called Social Business Enterprise (SBE) and it is based on the benefit maximization principle, and on a non-loss, non-benefit business. The best example of SBE is “The Grammen Danone Foods”, a project made with Group Danone in 2005 to concrete the execution of a social business, reduce poverty and bring health through food by adding medicine to it.
 
In Peru, the opportunity to promote SBEs is enormous in order to reduce poverty, especially outside the capital. However, for the last years some NGOs have taken this initiative without some of the advantages that SBEs already have in order to concrete this objective. First, a SBE does not require external founds to operate; as it is self sustainable, and generates its own growth resources. Even more, a project in SBEs is commonly developed more professionally than NGOs are, because the principle of a profit-maximizing enterprise can be used to pay back the initial investors and to reach the social goal at the same time. Furthermore, SBE can be taken as an enormous challenge for business people who may consider it an opportunity to participate actively in the change of the poverty conditions of the nation. Finally, SBE can be a better alternative than NGOs in reducing poverty in Peru, but, as any new business model, it needs to be tested with small-scale projects. Therefore it is time for local companies to take this risk and invest some time, effort and money to work in proving that social responsibility is not only a mere obligation but also a commitment considered within the company´s mission.