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How to Make the SDGs Truly Sustainable: Social GET THE LATEST NEWS SENT TO YOUR INBOX

Entrepreneurs as Critical Achievement Engines

by David Wilcox (/user/18019) November 17, 2015
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Image Credit: United Nations (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2015/09/commitments-made-at-sustainable-development-summit-to-kickstart-
September 2nd, 2016
implementation-of-global-goals/)
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Related:
August 31st, 2016
Unilever Signs White House Equal Pay Pledge
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), deadlined for completion in 2015, have given way Unilever
to the new Sustainable Development Goals (/news_and_views/new_metrics/claire_sommer/newmetrics_ August 31st, 2016
%E2%80%9915_un_sdgs_prompting_business_collaboration_bet) (SDGs), launched in September at the Taking Sustainability From the Home Kitchen to
UN General Assembly and an array of other events including the SDG Business Forum, the the Cambodian Slums Kohler
Social Good Summit and the Clinton Global Initiative. +
In evaluating the over 100 presentations at these events, I was struck by the following: MOST RECENTLY VIEWED IN THE LIBRARY
Emergent Economies Consumer
Few presentations gave any indication of serious learning from the wins — and losses — during 20 Behavior Change Project
years of MDG work. A delineation of the models that work (i.e. more sustainable and scalable) is [Research Report]
missing.
In the absence of learning frameworks, presenters reiterate the same problems, now expanded to IBM and Ogilvy create ads with
17 goals and 169 targets. The result is a plea for more resources to support the new SDGs without purpose for the Smart Cities
any evidence that those resources will be employed more effectively. campaign
[Campaign Video]
The core request at these events was for more than four trillion dollars per year to implement
(Mis)calculated Risk and Climate
the SDGs over 15 years. This leads to two questions: Change: Are Rating Agencies
Repeating Credit Crisis Mistakes?
1. How can you call the goals replacing the MDGs sustainable if they lead with requests for resources [Research Report]
that are not?
MORE
2. At the beginning of the SDG process, what should the world’s government, corporate and NGO
leaders focus on now to make the new global goals actually sustainable?

These questions are at the heart of ReachScale’s global search to find the most innovative
RECENT COMMENTS
and sustainable models for solving intractable challenges. We have advocated tirelessly for the
need to identity models that 1) can be scaled and 2) are not reliant on non-profit funding (which
is donation-dependent and driven by the dictates of donors.)

The best models we have found have social entrepreneurs at the helm who see the world
differently. They frequently take the “against” position (as described in a ReachScale article jholl99
(http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/466-social-entrepreneurship-social-innovation-not-the-same-thing) , “Social
I think its great that at least somebody is studying
Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation: Not the Same Thing”: the homeless problem. Of course without the 30
million illegals and open borders maybe we
In branding, claiming the against position means using a competitor’s dominant spend would have enough money to end homelessness.
and mindshare to carve out an anti-space — the Un-cola for example.
How $1K Can Keep Someone Off the Streets for Two
Years · 11 hours ago
Social entrepreneurs are quintessential against positioners. [Microfinance inventor]
Mohammed Yunus stated it clearly: “I looked at how traditional banks do business and
we did the opposite.”

In very practical terms, these stubborn, opinionated entrepreneurs frequently show up

1 of 3 9/6/2016 2:49 AM
How to Make the SDGs Truly Sustainable: Social Entrepreneurs as Critic... http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/business_models/da...

after the aid and development models have failed or at least failed to become
sustainable. Their arrival on the scene is less a Kumbaya moment and more a
“disruptive innovation” one.

Social entrepreneurs (/news_and_views/ict_big_data/hannah_furlong steve48

/forbes_names_6_social_entrepreneurs_finalists_under_30_1m) are relentlessly focused on what they have
Hey Agenda 21 company Sustainable Brands!
learned. Their conversations highlight the innovations that are rolled into ingenious, often cross- Renewable subsidies already outpace carbon
sector models and well as the people who use these models to solve their own and others’ energy subsidies by a factor of 7 to 1. How about
problems. Their resource requests are framed by why their model should be scaled and how it we end all energy subsidies and see which...
can replace less effective approaches. The primary goal for these innovative social Insurance Funds Worth $1.2T Urge G20 to Stop Funding
entrepreneurs is to demonstrate that appropriate capacity building and scale enable their hybrid Fossil Fuels by 2020 · 3 days ago

or for-profit innovation models to solve problems sustainably, thus reducing dependence on

fundraising.

Social entrepreneurs have offered these five critical solutions to the problem of making the
Sustainable Development Goals truly sustainable:

1. Recognize that commitments to achieving the SDGs must avoid Einstein’s famous definition of
insanity: Doing the same thing and expecting different results.
2. Replace unsustainable practices with new models that leverage under-utilized resources and other
sustainable approaches.
3. Redeploy resources from the inadequacies of donor, foreign aid and impact investment processes
and into new models and leadership that move significant resources from unsustainable approaches
to sustainable ones.
4. Reinvent how organizations request and deploy funding by moving to scale solutions that are more
sustainable than those that failed to achieve most of the MDGs.
5. Reassess all investments, models and approaches. The most sustainable solutions must be
aggressively adopted across sector and country boundaries, no matter their origin or disruption.

Increasingly, leaders are being asked to challenge the status quo. These leaders — often
disruptors — no longer target seed stage or individual impact investments. The most impactful
leaders know that pilots do not lead to scaling or to sustainability.

Social entrepreneurs thrive at risk-taking and from learning rapidly about what doesn’t work.
These are the sustainable, scale-oriented models and management teams that are best
equipped to handle significant capital and to shift how these goals could actually be achieved —
shifting from unsustainable and un-achieved to sustainable and achieved development goals.

The article is co-authored with Dr. Amit Kapoor (http://amitkapoor.com/) , India, and the Shared
Value Initiative India, which connects the business and community leaders towards defining
the practice of shared value in India.

David Wilcox is the founder of ReachScale (http://www.reachscale.com/) , an organization that

aligns the social responsibility goals of corporations with high potential social
entrepreneurs working in areas of common interest. ReachScale is a response to the
number of exciting and… [Read more about David Wilcox] (/user/18019)

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