Instructor Resource
Neck, Entrepreneurship, 1e
SAGE Publishing, 2018
Case Notes
Chapter 4: Supporting Social Entrepreneurship
Muhammad Yunus; Founder of Grameen Bank & Winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize (2006)
Summary
Muhammad Yunus changed the world of money lending by establishing the Grameen Bank—
one of the first large-scale banks to offer microcredit/microloans. Yunus was educated in the
United States, where he earned a PhD in economics. He later returned to his home of
Bangladesh where he began his micro-lending venture on a small scale among local, poverty-
Analysis
Muhammad Yunus is a classic example of a social entrepreneur. His venture of microlending
took aim at a specific problem—a “wicked problem” (i.e. poverty in developing countries)—and
helped to solve that problem by providing the poor with access to microcredit, thus
empowering entrepreneurship at its most basic levels.
Sample Answers to Case Questions
Please include the questions along with the sample answers.
1. What specific things might a social entrepreneur learn from Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s
amazing education and life journey that could help one find success in a future social
entrepreneurship effort?
2. What social issues are you passionate about? What ideas do you have for an
entrepreneurial venture that could positively impact a social issue you care deeply
about?
3. What other entrepreneurial domains might be tapped to specifically target needs and
address problems we face as human beings?