Businesses can serve (both) a social and a profit mission.  Many already are doing this effectively. [more]

A couple hundred years ago, our nation's first significant business "professor" Benjamin Franklin, suggested in his "lesson five" of business conduct that firms can "do well by doing good."

Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense if you believe in a consumer based economy; developing products and services that appeal to the needs and wants of the individuals buying them.

But of course, consumer based economies cut both ways. Alert systems and medication for the elderly are developed to fill consumer demand and change our world for the better. Yet porn and casinos also fill consumer demand and have not contributed much.

So, let's look at Franklin's remarks a little deeper.

At MBA school (I graduated in June at age 54), I was amazed to find out that business academe (at least Ohio State's Fisher Business School professors) have expanded beyond simply teaching the theories and disciplines of making and keeping money.

They now teach that the impact business has on social change has grown immeasurably since Ben was flying his kite.

This development of third world economies force business to consider how much will be "good" (sanitation, medical needs and nutrition) change and what evils of consumerism (greed, violence, porn) will we rain upon our brothers and sisters of this global village.

And so, upon graduation and the selling of my primary media business, I've decided the next chapter in my life will be as a social entrepreneur.

Doing well by doing good seemed to work with my own business. We used direct media and the internet to market to our customers only if we had their permission and we treated each other as we wished to be treated. We also received awards for community service.

In May, every single person in our shop was rewarded for 19 years of blood, sweat and tears in a private equity transfer. I believe we will continue to do well by doing good.

That's real world, personal experience. But is it broadly available? Two books I've read recently say "definitely."

You may have heard of the first book since Mohammed Yunis won the Nobel Prize last fall for Banker to the Poor. In this, Yunis describes the fundamental theory of his wildly successful Grameen Bank, a $5.1 billion institution whose micro credit loans have gone in small increments to over 5 million micro enterprises without collateral. This father of micro credit was a professor who started in 1976 with a $27 loan to local craftsmen in his home of Bangladesh and has more than proven his theory that "poor people make good credit risks and even better entrepreneurs."

An even broader and forward looking version of the same theory is contained in C.K. Prahalad's book Bottom of the Pyramid which espouses the theory that the 4 billion (of 6 billion total) people on earth who earn less than $2 a day will be most helped when we "stop thinking of them as victims or burdens and recognize them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value conscious consumers." Simply put, Prahalad's theory says businesses who can innovate their product and pricing to serve these 4 billion people (instead of feeling sorry for them) will, as Yunis did, build great businesses of which they can be proud.

A specific example of a company doing this is Technology Management Inc in Cleveland, Ohio. TMI is primarily focused on developing a fuel cell that can be mass produced and sold profitably for about $500. This cell, using renewable energy sources available in any tribal bush in Africa, for example, can provide improved water for an entire village.

If TMI is successful in this challenging but worthwhile venture, what's their potential for "doing well" by "doing good?" Their market will consist of over 1.3 billion people who today have no access to improved water sources - let alone sanitation. And so TMI actually figures it could help end the most common third world diseases - at a profit.

Hmmmmmm.