Entrepreneurship as The Key to The Nation’s Sustainable Economic Development

As we are living day by day, it seems our generation has so many things to do within so little time. While some of us are fortunate enough to see clear skies and to breathe fresh air, at the same time we are also challenged to protect the sustainability of it. While we are encouraged to be creative with the existence of advanced tech and knowledge, on the other hand we are haunted by the anxiety of the climate crisis. It is only natural this generation spends so much time thinking what could be done to make a change. IDN Media’s recent report covered that the Millennials and Gen Z are the generations with most concerns about climate change and even putting more efforts to find solutions for it today. Surely the next path will lead us to the questions of: how do we create big impacts at once? How do we influence the whole generation to do the same? To this, Pratisara Bumi Foundation sees a lot of hopes in entrepreneurship and this article will tell you why you should believe in the idea, too.

Firstly, entrepreneurs are the creators in our generation. In business-as-usual, we can simply understand how creating a business of your own may open wider job opportunities to others which can lead to the effort of increasing the productivity level of our human resources and eventually boosting the national income. But when an entrepreneur is able to find a higher purpose than ‘just’ generating as much profit as possible, it will take a different level of creativity to come up with an idea that solves a problem in their surrounding. As an example, ten years ago we would have never imagined someone would come up with an idea of a waste bank as a solution to Bali’s overload waste problem. However, we have got to see Griya Luhu making decent profit while creating such a great impact for Bali. Beyond that, an entrepreneur has control to ensure the business is connected with a sustainable supply chain. It is within their hands whether the local community’s resources and/or other sustainable businesses were to be involved in the business value chain. To put it simply, an entrepreneur can create solutions to tackle real issues while keeping it profitable enough to keep the business running.

See our Greenspirasi videos on our Youtube channel for examples of existing businesses with sustainable value chains.

One of INKURI participants during the program

Being an entrepreneur also means being a leader, starting from as little circle as your own company. When running a business, you have superpower to lead your team in the right direction. This will give you a key role in organizing and motivating a group of people to achieve a common objective through innovation. Your leadership will not only determine the success of the business, but also create and protect a healthy work culture within the organization. By becoming an entrepreneur, you have an opportunity to encourage others to grow which may create a space for other great leaders to be born. And when the business becomes bigger, it takes great leadership skills to bring all the stakeholders together to be in the same ship heading towards further journeys. All of these make entrepreneurship far from an easy task, however it is surely worth fighting for. After all, we need more leaders who care enough to tackle rooted issues inside the country and beyond.

Lastly, it is obvious that entrepreneurship is an engine to the nation’s economic growth. Recently in an Indonesian Bank’s workshop called Karya Kreatif Indonesia, the Minister of Cooperation and MSMEs, Teten Masduki, mentioned that Indonesia has numbers to catch up to become a  well developed country. While our ASEAN neighbor country Singapore reached 8.76%, Indonesia’s entrepreneurs are only 3.18% of the population. Hence this year the government aims to increase it by 4%. However, this is never about generating as much money as possible. The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute on their 2019’s Global Entrepreneurship Index emphasized that entrepreneurship should be able to promote economic development through employment, innovation, and welfare. Therefore, quality matters more than quantity. That being said, our generation’s end goal is beyond just having more entrepreneurs, but we also need to make sure these entrepreneurs on the rise are creating something that is giving great and real impacts to the surroundings.

INKURI Market Day

In the effort of encouraging the young generations to become responsible entrepreneurs, Pratisara Bumi Foundation comes up with sustainability entrepreneurship incubator programs focusing on the regions with less accessibilities in Indonesia. We believe entrepreneurship training must be equally accessible for all youth with as few barriers as possible. Three years ago the program had its kick-off in Ende and then continued with a 9-month business incubator program in Bali in 2020. A similar program will be launched soon this year. Plan Indonesia through their Ready to Work program, supported by Citi Foundation and collaborating with Pratisara Bumi Foundation (INKURI), will kick-off Scale Green, a 6-month entrepreneurship training and assistance program for early stage businesses to improve their product and business model, as well as transforming it into a green business. There will be at least 35 local businesses in Bali to be mentored intensively for 5 months.  

More information about this program.

Writer: Esa Savitaresta Arnaya | Communication Associate