Celebrating MSME Day 2025
Let's focus on going beyond green, to regenerative solutions
Today is Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (MSME) Day.
Now, that might not seem relevant to you, except…
“Micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises are engines of economic activity, and lifelines for communities.
Representing more than two-thirds of businesses worldwide, these enterprises are the backbone of economies, particularly in emerging markets.” (ILO, 2025)
In reality, that means that they are also responsible for most of global job creation and thus, social development – all of the processes and infrastructure by which we are able to flourish in our lives.
MSMEs employ more than 70% of us, worldwide: literally, billions of people.
These are incredible numbers, initially hard to take in: I mean, my business is an MSME and I work to help people turn their idea into an MSME and yet, I hadn’t fully grasped the scope and scale of all of this until recently. Yet, once you see these numbers, you can’t un-see them, which is a good thing: stopping your daily life from being an abstract blur of anonymously produced brands and bringing it into focus of the human and more-than-human beings that made them.
Imagine then, the collective power of MSMEs to lead the way in business ‘going green’ over the next 5 years. We wake up in June 2030 and it’s a circular, digital world where even a solopreneur can be global AND green.
Already, my systems-thinking self is computing endless risks and opportunities. What nags away at me though, is the sense of more-of-the-same – a collective, unwitting greenwashing hidden by our courage to take on the task.
The part that I’m especially in-love with, is beyond that. Already, going green is not just a nice-to-have but a core differentiator that attracts customers, funding and investors.
What if then, as MSMEs – and the ecosystem actors who shape the landscape, we don’t just focus on green and instead focus our attention on regenerative – and whatever emerges beyond regenerative - as the new normal? I mean, that’s incredibly exciting when it comes to the real problem to be in-love with and shaping flourishing futures and redefining what ‘growth’ means in innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem for businesses.
Imagine instead then, the collective power of MSMEs to lead the way in making regenerative solutions an everyday reality.
What might we be doing as founders in 2030 and the years after?
What will jobs look like in these MSMEs?
How might that happen in combination with a digital, ethical AI-enabled world?
How can innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems change now to make this a reality?
What plug-n-play sustainability-tech solution could you create today that we’ll all be using then?
How will Nature as a Stakeholder have evolved from being an ESG Metric to a real-time conversation across your value chain?
I’m loving an alternative future where an Innovation Hub – One Stop Shop doesn’t just provide skills for a founder to take an idea for a solution and turn it into reality, but also involves direct conversations with Nature via Earth Law approved AI-decoding Nature interactions, using space-tech real-time data to assess environmental impact and reformat ideas into something magnificently aligned with regeneration. Oh yes, and get government-led financial rewards and tax-breaks for being aligned with a new eco-social contract.
Game on! Let’s do it. Get in touch with me at elaine@flowinaction.org to explore more.
References:
ILO, 2025. InfoStories. The power of small: Unlocking the potential of SMEs.