Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus has urged universities to make the concept of social business an integral part of education, research, and innovation.

Academic leaders, researchers and social business practitioners gathered on Monday at the Telecom Building in Mirpur for Academia Dialogue 2026, a flagship session of Social Business Day exploring how universities can embed social business more deeply into curricula and institutional practice, said a press release.

The dialogue, held in two panel sessions followed by closing remarks, brought together representatives of the global Yunus Social Business Centre (YSBC) network alongside scholars from Bangladesh, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, and Thailand.

Yunus delivered both the opening and closing remarks at Academia Dialogue 2026.

The first panel, moderated by Dr Farhana Ferdousi of Southeast University, examined how universities can move social business from the margins of business schools into the mainstream of academic life. 

Professor Muhammad Ibrahim of Grameen University argued that institutions must reorient around value-creating entrepreneurship rather than treating it as the preserve of a single faculty, floating the idea of a dedicated "Master of Entrepreneurial Arts" in place of a conventional MBA. 

Prof D. Abdur Rab of IUBAT called for at least three core courses on social business within entrepreneurship programmes, noting that while microfinance has already transformed lives across Bangladesh, academia's task now is to help make socially driven business models explicitly profitable — and to build broader public confidence in the concept.

Professor Dr Rafiuddin Ahmed of North South University pointed to the democratizing effect of platforms such as Canva, Udemy, and edX in connecting students directly to world-class instruction and income opportunities, and argued that entrepreneurship education should begin as early as age ten. 

He warned that universities are slow to adapt to risk irrelevance, citing the estimated four million Bangladeshi master's degree-holders who remain unemployed even as informal, home-based ventures continue to thrive.

Alex Counts of the Grameen Foundation reflected on how academic-nonprofit partnerships open space to ask deeper questions about the societal value of new services, while Santos Judith Martinez Ramos of Universidad Autónoma de Baja California framed international collaboration as a genuine exchange of knowledge, with university laboratories in both Mexico and Bangladesh positioned to tackle community challenges and climate change together.

The second panel, moderated by Dr. Ashir Ahmed of Kyushu University, Japan, turned to the global YSBC network. Dr. Ahmed announced that the network now numbers 116 centres worldwide, with the 117th to be established at Grameen University.

Dr. Yusnidah Ibrahim of Albukhary International University described efforts to formalize social business studies through a dedicated curriculum and an international research paper network. 

Professor Chien-wen Mark Shen of National Central University, Taiwan, called on city governments to fund local social businesses through micro-loan models and stressed that ESG metrics and certification will become central to how YSBCs prove their value over the next decade. 

Professor Naoko Oishi of Ryukoku University, Japan, shared how community demand led to a new Social Business Exposure Program for younger learners, pointing to Grameen Euglena as a model of cross-sector collaboration.

Professor Giuseppe Torluccio of the University of Bologna and Professor Alicia María Rubio Bañón of the University of Murcia both addressed the role of artificial intelligence and new institutional competencies in reshaping how universities teach and measure social impact. 

Prof. Dra. Ana Fernández Laviada of the University of Cantabria highlighted an ongoing global initiative to build comprehensive data on social business outcomes — data that was virtually nonexistent before 2015 — as essential to demonstrating the network's collective impact.

Discussion also turned to leadership development, with Alex Counts arguing that leaders are made more than born, through faculty who coach students in examining failure rather than simply complaining about it.

In closing remarks, Dr. Faiz Shah of AIT/Yunus Thailand likened academic training to teaching someone to ride a bicycle: necessary, but no guarantee of resilience when conditions turn volatile. He called for universities to better integrate real-world experience alongside industry knowledge and metrics-driven publishing, while acknowledging that funding for innovation must be actively sought rather than expected to materialize on its own.

Professor Niaz Ahmed Khan of Grameen University underscored the need for continuous faculty learning, localized contextualization within Bangladesh, and stronger peer-to-peer support across the YSBC network as a foundation for community outreach.

Lamiya Morshed, Executive Director of the Yunus Centre, confirmed that the network's efforts will continue to expand, with the next global YSBC gathering set for October 2026. She also announced plans to establish a dedicated venture team to carry forward the initiatives discussed at this year's dialogue.