Leveraging sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the era of industrial revolution 4.0

Abstraksi

Indonesia is among 195 United Nations (UN) member countries that support sustainable development goals (SDGs) and Indonesia is committed to achieve the goals not only at the national level but also in local and community level. SDGs envisage the purpose for not leaving anyone behind the goals of achieving economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environment sustainability. At the same time, the world is also undergone by the development of digitalisation under industrial revolution (IR) 4.0. IR 4.0 demands all countries to utilise digital technology and innovation to increase productivity. For the developing countries like Indonesia, the use of technology like robots can be threatening for the country’s labour. Therefore, innovative business and sustainable entrepreneurship should address the challenges of achieving SDGs and at the same to catch up with the IR 4.0. In Indonesia, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are perceived as the backbone of the economy as in other Southeast Asian countries. MSMEs contribute to Indonesia’s economic development in which nearly 60% of the total GDP, 97% of the total workforce, and 14% of the total exports are from MSMEs. In 2013, the number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Indonesia comprised 99.99% of the total enterprises or about 57.9 million enterprises and employed 97% of the total workforce or about 117.68 million people. However, the growing of Indonesia’s MSMEs are still not aligned with the absorption of Indonesia’s employment. Even though the rate of Indonesia’s unemployment has been declined since 2012, but the rate of unemployment especially for youth is still considered high. For young people on the age of 15-24 years old, data from ILO showed that the number of unemployed youth for this category was 21% in 2017 in which unemployed women is higher than men or about 27.9% compare to 14,9%. As it is predicted that the number of productive people on the age of 15-68 years old will be highly increased in 2030, this will be a catastrophe for Indonesia if the country does not take up any actions. To answer the challenges, entrepreneurship is encouraged since the job opportunities will not suffice with increased number of Indonesia’s graduates. However the business activities can involve the extraction of natural resources to produce goods and other consumers’ products. The fast growing of enterprises can trigger adverse impact towards environment sustainability that will endanger for human being and all other living entities on earth. Unsustainable environment can also affect peoples’ health that are contributed by unclean water and sanitation, waste mismanagement, air pollution, etc. These will be hampering Indonesia’s development due to unhealthy human resources. Therefore, green technology, green innovation, and even blockchain as being underpinned by the concept of IR 4.0 should be deployed and expedited in the implementation. While Indonesia is still trying to grasp with IR 4.0, Japan has promoted the industrial revolution 5.0 that focus on personalisation in which customers can do customisation and personalisation with the help of machine and human intelligence. Innovative and sustainable entrepreneurs will be able to resolve unemployment problems, social inequality, and environmental degradation. Moreover, they can compete in a fast growing industrialisation by bring in innovation and technology. To realise the mission in alleviating unemployment rate as part of achieving SDG 1 on “no poverty” and SDG 8 on “decent work and economic growth”, as well as to seise the opportunities under IR 4.0, therefore strategic ways have to be implemented on the way forward. Content analysis is conducted to discover the strategies in which the result includes the following: 1. Revitalise education system. The Indonesia’s education system is still focusing more on theoretical approach and subjects that involve social, economy, and environment aspects are still segregated. In fact, it is pertinent to teach students both theory and practice equally. Practical knowledge should not be limited to only students in vocational school. Practice is important because practice without knowledge will always be a concept not an action. Also, as environment awareness is sometimes being forgotten by people in other field outside environment, it is also pertinent to teach students since the beginning to know and understand environment sustainability or climate change. The responsibilities of protecting the environment should be taken up by people in all areas and all levels since the adverse impacts are influencing the whole society. 2. Promote green entrepreneurship. By promoting green entrepreneurship, it is expected that people mindset will be shifted from only thinking of opening up a business that create new products, to utilising unused products or waste as the resource of production or renewable energy option. Entrepreneurs should also be able to adapt their business activities and innovation to be more green. 3. Improve regulatory environment towards innovation. Indonesia’s regulatory environment should be supportive towards innovations and most importantly support its application in business industries. The support can be in a form of providing skills trainings for people across Indonesia including remote areas by building innovation lab in each district or village; as well as rendering support in the process of obtaining patents for the innovations. 4. Foster access to finance Access to finance is always a problem for entrepreneurs especially for women. Micro-investment system should be developed in order to assist MSMEs to resolve financing problems. The financing system should also be guided with intensive mentoring programmes such as entrepreneurial skills or technology deployment skills. Moreover, incentives system can be developed to spur people interest in doing green business.