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The question is raised in comments on a recent article by Arianna Huffington, writing on her participation in Sir Richard Branson's B Team:

Camels and eyes of needles came immediately to mind 

Today we are faced by both an enviromental and a human crisis - of poverty. Typically these have been seen as discreet issues with the world sustainability often used in the environmental context, by corporations in particular. Some even make "too many people" the central point.

What if sustainable business adopted a "people first" strategy where human rights is a key component?              .

You won't know me from Adam but I was one of those who voted your government into power.

Some years later, it was my father who wrote to you about the removal of Clause 4, He asked "how long before you remove socialism". I was with him on the way to commemorate his fallen comrades in Normandy, when he saw you and shouted "how many more are going to die this time, in Iraq?".

It's been said that the best way to prevent a revolution is to join it and change its direction.

Should we be inserting this new term in the social innovation lexicon I wonder?

The endless stream of sponsored online initiatives and conferences might persuade us of a great turning but we can easily pull back the veneer to reveal stronger motivation, for profit.

As I write , the BBC is broadcasting the Business and Society debate from the House of Lords where Viscount Younger is describing the value role of social enterprise.

It may have something to do with corporate sponsorship.

At Schumacher college somewhere in Devon, they've been asking:

"What would the world look like if money embodied our values, if the best business decision was the best decision for society, and if wealth was defined by how much we give, not how much we have? "

Not a million miles away in a Gloucestershire viillage we've been asking - What if economics was measured and calibrated in human terms? What if love and compassion were embedded in the way we do business?

This week, in Cambridge, apparently.

On 16th March 2009, I sent an email to Virgin Unite after I was asked to clarify my suggestion on their website.  .

Hello Virgin Team,

I'd submitted several suggestions to your website with no response and this was a follow to explain our work.

At the Ukrainian lunch in Davos, Richard Branson gave a talk suggesting that business should focus more on social problems.

Speaking on World Environment Day, Pope Francis drew attention to our focus on monetary value while disregarding those in poverty who are disposed of like trash.

With the all current dissent about the UK's new social stock exchange, it may be worth looking back to what Muhammad Yunus has said on the subject. To be clear, by social business, he means self sustaining, non dividend distributing with a primary social goal. 

As ever, the UK's more commercially focussed interpretion shifts this toward a profit yieilding model.

Yunus says:

In perhaps what may prove to be the biggest minsnomer ever in social enterprise, the People's Report due to be published next month reveals that access to funding is seen as the major obstacle for 39% of the social enterprise community.

In 2005, this was an issue I took up with Baroness Thornton, then chair of the Social Enterprise Coalition, pointing out that for the self-sustaining b business with a social purpose, we were excluded from all existing forms of social finance.

"I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin'
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall." - Bob Dylan