The UN Realizes It Needs Help from Business to Hit Its Goals. Will Silicon Valley Sign On?

Exclusive: In a closed-door session at The Fairmont Hotel Presidential Suite in San Francisco, the UN Secretary General and 22 private sector leaders discussed concrete ways to create 600 million new jobs by 2025.

On this day in 1945, the United Nations needed the support of 50 nations to sign a treaty that would officially establish the UN and create a better world. Seventy years to the day later, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon sat down with some of the nation’s innovation elite to discuss another goal he needs help to achieve.

“I need your support. You are the most brilliant innovators,” he said to the group of mostly Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and executives at a very exclusive roundtable at the Fairmont hotel.  “What matters is that some creative and innovative people who have the entrepreneurial capacity help these visions get carried out. That is what the United Nations needs. We need innovation and technology to help these Sustainable Development Goals. ”

The aspirational goals — 17 — are aimed at eradicating extreme poverty, boosting gender equality and moving toward environmental sustainability, the goals provide a roadmap for what the UN hopes the world will look like in 2030.

Ban was speaking to a crowd which knows a thing or two about getting things done: Box Founder Aaron Levie, Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes, LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman and 15 other influential CEOs and entrepreneurs.  to enlist support for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

While the Sustainable Development Goals may be far reaching in scope, the private sector leaders latched on to one in particular that might as well be called Universal Employment: creating 600 million jobs by 2025 to employ the eligible global workforce. That’s nearly twice the population of the United States, by the way.

Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell and the UN Foundation’s first global advocate for entrepreneurship, conceded that large companies like his won’t be making the biggest dent in that  600 million target — entrepreneurs and small business owners will be the key change agents, he predicted.

Sharing a story about the early days at Dell when the CEO decided to put a plant in Morocco, Dell said he witnessed first hand how growing businesses can enact real change. “If you go [to Dell’s office in Morocco], what you’ll find are thousands of young people who are very excited about their future,” Dell said. “They are soaking up knowledge and have great opportunities. They go home to their families and explain why it is going to be better tomorrow and next year.”

Sheila Marcelo, the founder of Care.com, is one of those entrepreneurs who needs UN support to scale her growing business. Observing that 49% of new jobs created in the next decade will come from caregiving, Marcelo encouraged Ban to move policy forwards that could professionalize care giving and improve the standards of care. With mortality rates declining in developed countries, Marcelo also encouraged the UN to consider supporting immigration laws that could get more caregivers from developing countries into the U.S.

“You need to work to pay for great care and you need great care to you,” she said at the roundtable discussion. “If it’s all about jobs, you have to invest in caregiving.”

A few executives from the growing sharing economy advised the Ban to think about platforms that give entrepreneurs access to additional income and resources. Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy for Uber David Plouffe discussed how the ride-sharing service gives drivers the opportunity to earn money flexibly on their own time. Joe Gebbia, the co-founder and CPO of Airbnb, echoed Plouffe’s comments by focusing on the potential technology has to expand those opportunities exponentially.

“We can connect people faster than ever before so that those who have can connect with those who want,” said Gebbia. “We now have one million micro-entrepreneurs sharing on AirBnb. Imagine if instead we had 100 million entrepreneurs not only sharing their homes, but sharing their time and resources with those who need it most.”

For Reid Hoffman, the chairman and former CEO of LinkedIn, while encouraging entrepreneurial activity is important, giving entrepreneurs the ability to scale may be even more critical. High-impact entrepreneurship in companies that are getting to scale is what drives a majority of job creation and the key is to think about how networks both within and between countries can form to create scalable businesses, he said.

The hour-long session wrapped up with closing remarks from Ban and Dell noting how the lack of job opportunities leads to political instability. If the larger goal of the UN is to make the world a better place, it’s clear that job creation and technology play a central role in getting there. That’s why Dell in partnership with the United Nation Foundation has launched Entrepreneurs UNite: A campaign and a petition to help entrepreneurs scale globally and support the Sustainable Development Goals which are up for a vote by world leaders in September.

“You can give [people] a new government, you can give them aid, you can give them a place to live, you can give them any number of things, but none of those things will give them hope for a future like a job will,” said Michael Dell.

Read Ban Ki-Moon’s post on the Sustainable Development Goals here.

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