What Does Bill Gates’ “Creative Capitalism” Have in Common With the Thinking of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus?

On January 30, 2008, the New York Times published an interesting “tid bit” on the relationship between Bill Gates’ “creative capitalism” speech (previously blogged here) and the ideas of Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus.  Here is an excerpt from the story:

Bill Gates’s bold Davos challenge to the world’s capitalists last week should have come with equally bold footnotes.

“There are billions of people who need the great inventions of the computer age,” he asserted. “Breakthroughs change lives only where people can afford to buy them.”

Conspicuously missing from the appeal, which asserted that human nature is not just driven by greed but also by concern for our fellow beings, was any reference to the work and thinking of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

The microfinance innovator, who is known as the “banker for the poor,” recently wrote a book, “Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism,” that foreshadows Mr. Gates’s newfound social philosophy.

For the entire article, go to “Many Are Already at Work on Fulfilling Gates’s Vision” in the January 30, 2008 New York Times.  For more information about the work of Muhammad Yunus, you can visit the website of a nonprofit that he supports, Results, Inc., with particular focus on this press release by Results.

DAB