Entrepreneurs of the World, Unite!

To guide its efforts to increase global health, security, and overall standards of living over the next several decades, the United Nations is officially adopting 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) later this year.

When people consider sustainability, particularly in the face of overall population growth, they usually focus on issues like healthcare, food production, education, and management of natural resources.

But entrepreneurism plays a key role in ongoing sustainability too. According to UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon, we will need to create 600 million global jobs over the next ten years to employ the eligible workforce. Resilient communities need robust economies that can support schools, healthcare services, local governance, and more.

And to produce 600 million new jobs, you need entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. That’s why Secretary-General Moon met with a number of Silicon Valley executives and entrepreneurs in San Francisco recently, including myself, to talk about ways to help achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal #8, which aspires to “promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.”

Creating 600 million new jobs is a massive undertaking. It will require huge numbers of micro-entrepreneurs. And it will require significant numbers of “gazelles” as well, the kinds of entrepreneurs who, as Endeavor CEO Linda Rottenberg has noted, create the scalable, fast-growing businesses that account “for nearly all private sector job creation.”

The Networked Age and platforms like LinkedIn make it possible for entrepreneurs of all stripes to develop the networks of talent, finance, and customers that any new business requires. And as platforms and technologies like Kiva.org, Airbnb.com, and Bitcoin evolve, and as hundreds of millions of people use inexpensive smartphones to join the online world, the potential for unprecedented levels of global entrepreneurship is increasing dramatically.

In this dynamic and uncharted landscape, the public sector and the private sector must work together. Business leaders must embrace the challenge of bringing new opportunities to new markets in ways that meet the UN’s goals for sustainability, inclusivity, and fairness. And government must implement policies and regulations that promote innovation, growth, and creative approaches to long-standing problems.

Ultimately we’re not going to create 600 million new jobs in just ten years by maintaining the status quo. An accomplishment of that magnitude will require breakthrough technologies, outlandish ideas, bold bets, and collaboration on a massive scale.

To that end, Dell CEO Michael Dell, who is also the UN Foundation Global Advocate for Entrepreneurship, is asking other entrepreneurs, business leaders, and professionals to join him in signing a petition at Entrepreneurs Unite and spreading the word about the UN’s commitment to global job creation. I’m pleased to join him in this ongoing effort, and hope you will do so as well.