This book describes how the author in partnership with some of the world's most visionary business leaders has launched the world's first purposely designed social businesses. From collaborating with Danone to produce affordable, nutritious yogurt for malnourished children in Bangladesh to building eye care hospitals that will save thousands of poor people from blindness, the book offers a glimpse of the amazing future that the author forecasts for a planet transformed by thousands of social businesses. The Author's Next Big Idea offers a pioneering model for nothing less than a new, more humane form of capitalism. In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is hampered by a narrow view of human nature in which people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit. In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including the spiritual, the social, and the altruistic. Welcome to the world of social business, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet. The book tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social businesses, including Yunus's own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already under way and in the worldwide effort to eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.