Unleashing solutions that matter
What does 1,000 young (-ish) people from 120+ countries do for nine days if you put them together? Spoiler: it’s not going to be one big party.
Some context to begin with:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted in the UN Leaders’ Summit in September 2017 got one thing right — they were really inclusive. A working group involving 30 countries and series of consultations over more than two years, the UN was serious this time in shedding the controversy surrounding the mystical exclusiveness of the Millennium Development Goals.
The downside of this approach was: to many, the SDGs resembled a laundry list put together by people who were not looking at the breadth of the solutions they were proposing. 169 targets under 17 broader goals is no joke and when you have to achieve those targets in 15 years then suddenly the MDGs start to look less challenging in retrospect.
Bill Gates referred to the SDGs as akin to the Bible, adding that he would prefer to start with something simpler, “like the Ten Commandments.” Mark Suzman, chief strategy officer of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, jokingly referred to the SDGs as “No Target Left Behind.”
With all the arguments being made against SDGs, these are still some of the most historical targets ever taken by governments of 193 countries for the first time to solve some of the pressing challenges of our time.
With upwards of USD 45 trillion over 15 years to fulfill all the SDG targets, financing remains a major challenge. Then there’s the problem of getting consensus of different governments on where to actually start with these mammoth targets. Copenhagen Consensus, an independent research initiative, had experts rank nearly 40 investment options to meet global challenges across a number of sectors. A similar approach has been taken by New America, GreenHouse and OECD, where they have put the SDGs in order — ranking them in a logical sequence in which to address them.
So it appears we have some idea regarding where to start but how? With the big investment requirements to meet the SDGs, it is evident that traditional overseas development assistance can’t fill a USD 5-trillion-a-year gap. We need a new breed of entrepreneurs and innovators approaching these problems with market-based solutions. The brightest minds of today can achieve these targets by bringing in the innovation and dynamism to solving these problems.
Unleash Lab 2017 is doing exactly that by bringing 1,000 young leaders from different parts of the world to co-design solutions which would disrupt the SDG landscape with transformational changes. A group of entrepreneurs, technologists, academics and intrapreneurs will spend nine days together in Århus, trying to bring out their vision for the world in 2030 by thinking about solutions under seven themes of the SDGs. After nine days of collaborative problem solving and converging of individual-level insights, seven potential solutions will be picked for further funding and support.
I’ll be joining the founding class of Unleash this month from Bangladesh to look at urban sustainability with an innovation and sustainability lens. My work at BRAC, the largest non-profit in the world, over the last five years has taught me to think about the actual delivery of services as much as — sometimes more so than — innovation. I would be bringing that flavour of frugal innovation and the mindset of thinking at scale, which is part of the DNA of BRAC.
Going back to first question of what will happen to the 1,000 people joining from all over the world: they will be trying to find ways to reach some of the biggest targets that the world has set itself to achieve by 2030. So no pressure at all!
I’ll be writing more on my experiences from Unleash in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on this space for more updates.
