Like most of humanity, before our interview last night I’d heard of Muhammad Yunus. You know, the Bangladeshi who created a bank to make micro loans to the poorest of the poor, recorded virtually zero defaults and received the Nobel Peace Prize. I’d even caught a glimpse of him on TV, or wandering around Davos.
But spending half an hour with the small, feisty professor opened my mind to a new way of thinking about the modern scourge of joblessness. His message is stark: the contemporary approach to work is distorted by a system that incentivises grades and university degrees above ingenuity.
It was one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve been privileged to conduct in my 13 visits to the World Economic Forum in Davos. I encountered a man who offers the most rational, most logical solution to the worsening jobs crisis. One where few have answers on how to combat the Fourth Industrial Revolution where robots increasingly replace human labour.
Yunus reminds us nothing can compete with human ingenuity. For the magic to happen, governments and corporates simply have to get out of the way – replace an entitlement mentality with authentic support for entrepreneurship. Help people to buy nets – stop trying to supply them with fish. This year, Yunus’s ideas will create 30 000 businesses in Bangladesh and another 100 000 in India. But most of all, it helps hundreds of thousands to return to the natural human state of self-employment.
