As the essential building blocks of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an opportunity for global introspection and socio-ecological transformations. The time seems ripe for re-inventing paradigms. The following mega-trends in societies can be identified:
- The recent upsurge in entrepreneurship in many countries (Fairlie et al. (2015); OECD (2016); Schwabel (2017)),
- Shifting attitudes towards the role of business in society (Deloitte 2016), and
- A broad policy push for social entrepreneurship and sustainable development which materialized in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Paris Agreement (UN 2015, UNFCCC 2015).
- Integration of Mediation and Design Thinking
- Servitization of products
- Increase in digital models
- Blockchain and industry 4.0
- Another trend is the continuing mismanagement of global public goods, such as carbon emissions, water and fisheries. This is fuelling climate change and posing the first genuine threat to humanity. At the forecast growth rates and given the growing middle class in emerging markets, we will need 2.4 planets in 2050 to sustain our lifestyles. We will have to change our ways of production and consumption in order to be able to live with scarcities of resources and avoid drastic climate change and the climate adaptation risk challenges that come with it (Wendt(2016).
The introduction of the SDGs therefore can be seen as a game changing event in re-directing economics.as the SDGs constitute a new global social contract which did not exist before.
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