I included him in this visit, which became very positive since it both contributed to the discussions with HEC and outside of them, to my increased knowledge of the Grameen sphere.

On Friday morning, Mr Mac Rae also arranged a meeting with Mr Christophe Person of IDEAM, Integral Development Asset Management, an organization that has an agenda, although limited, of investing into social businesses.

The outcome of the meeting at HEC became quite positive. AT HEC we had a very open and fruitful discussions with the Social Business Coordinator, Bénédicte Faivre-Tavigny and the holder of Chair, Prof. Fréderic Dalsace.

Since April 2009, HEC is now running a two months Social Business Program ( SBP ) at the end of students’ studies. The SBP is an additional, open program for those students that are interested in social business issues. It is not required for their exams, thus, it can be expected that it will attract those who could become potential “agents of change” in the society. One of the messages of this course is to encourage students to think differently. The first course gathered 34 students and the evaluations were very positive.

 Most students have posted a youtbe at the official hec web http://www.hec.edu/Tracks/Social-Business/Discover-More

As last year, there will now be a second course for about 50 students, from 14 April to 11 June   In this course, HEC is preparing to include two students from Bangla Desh in the Program. This will be financed through the Danone funds. HEC has a three year contract with the Danone Social Trust Fund.

Presently, there are eight professors working with the Social Business courses. Three of them belong to the permanent HEC research faculty and five are affiliated to the School.

 Formal Faculty is at http://www.hec.edu/Tracks/Social-Business/Faculty  What extraordinary as a catalytic mechansism is how 4 collaboration entrepreneurs lead different directions Out of the SB chair

This year another Social Business course will be introduced for the second year students with about 70 students. Thus, the Social Business people are gradually working themselves more into the core business of HEC .

Yet, it was clearly stated that they were not “mainstream” at the Business School .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBLawXhJxSU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcMl-667bL8

The crucial issue is, as in most academic institutions is the demand for academic excellence through publications. Social Business is very much a “hands-on” issue and as such not suitable for scientific research.

My reflection of this is that this is certainly true to some extent, but for AIT , with its long experience of and many links to development of poverty reduction programs, it would be easier to meet these demands than for HEC that is located in France – although there are many social business programs ongoing for poverty reduction there, as well.

It will, nevertheless, be a challenge for every university, working with the Yunus ideas, to “sell” the issue of sustainability of development through social business initiatives. For this it will be important to develop a network between universities working with same issues.

Research with students of 15 east coast universities shows that Robert Smith Business School is most up for going beyond normalcy of both us banking system and us business school system – I promised to put the leaders (mediated by Professor Melissa Carrier) of RBS 2 entrepreneurial centres of social and financial value in direct contact with benedicte

The intention would be to develop a network of academic institutions that can support each other and share ideas, materials and resource persons.

HEC had intended to call all other like-minded universities in the world to a meeting this spring, but had found that this would be to ask for too much in time and money of the participants. Instead, they had now planned to add one or two days for universities to the upcoming Wolfsburg meeting with the Grameen Global Network in November 2010. This will make an AIT representation there even more important.

The next giant leap for  sustainability’s youthkind is when HEC organises 2000 parisian youth to Q&A DR Yunus and Martin Hirsch ( 4 Feb 2010)

As a conclusion of the discussion it was agreed that

·     HEC is open for a sharing of materials and case studies but as for teaching notes and other skeleton materials in the form of power point presentations it will be necessary to have a close contact and a hand-over period not to lose the original intentions and the spirit of the material.

·     In this respect, AIT should look into the possibility to send one student to the SB course in April. This student could at the same time as he makes his studies be presented with the HEC training materials like power point presentations, etc. which would give us a flying start for an upcoming SB program. HEC can provide a lodging for such a student but AIT will have to bear all other costs for travels and living.

·     An exchange of faculty was considered a good idea and at HEC , there were at least one, or two persons that could be of great help for AIT . David Menasce and Jerôme Auriac were mentioned.

·     I promised to send the final ToR for the Director to HEC , which would give them a chance to look around for potential candidates in France .

·     I also promised to send the draft financial document for their information and comments.

·     There could be a cooperation agreement between AIT and HEC , which would enable HEC students to go to South East Asia for practical work and action-oriented research.

·     HEC has a growing cooperation with the French agricultural university, Agro Paris Tech that could be brought in for a triangular cooperation that would enrich the teaching and research potential of all three partners. A contact person there would be Jean Antoine Faby,  . Tel:               +33 (0)6 07 23 33 89         +33 (0)6 07 23 33 89. This will need to be followed up by both AIT and HEC .

Visit to IDEAM Integral Development Asset Management

At IDEAM, we met with Christophe Person who works for the fund and Jérôme Mérel who was on an internship there. Both are Alumni of the Social Business course at HEC .

IDEAM is an asset management fund set up jointly by Societé Général and Crédit Agricole of which the latter has some cooperation with the Grameen sphere. The aim is to develop social business funds in France . It was said that there is already about 1 billion Euros available in social business funds in France , but needs are much higher than that.

In many ways, this is still a bit outside the traditional activities of IDEAM and the percentage of funding of microloans lies at around 5%. The Risk Committee of IDEAM usually allows to use about 6-7% for such credits.

At present, IDEAM is also limited in their lending to social business activities by the lack of laws and regulations in France that has even lead to an initiative by Crédit Agricole to move parts of this to Luxemburg. The strive is now to increase the share of social business support to 20-30%.

According to French legislation companies are now obliged to build up and offer solidarity funds of 5 % for support to small companies and of a further 5% other social business, but there is no evaluation of this. The participation of the Danone Community Funds had nevertheless meant a break through in this respect. I got an idea that this could be a very effective tool to slow down the race for bonuses in large companies, that for each Euro paid in bonus, the company should be legally obliged to pay the same amount for a company social Trust fund and one Euro for a social business fund. That might make the sky-high bonuses less attractive to decide about for boards of directors all over the world.