When the UN General Assembly met in September last year to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals, it marked a turning point in the search for solutions to address the most pressing problems of today’s world.

Four months down the line, the focus is shifting towards the investments needed to service the new goals, investments that could radically improve the lives of billions of people while ushering in a better, more stable and less precarious world.

For starters, the SDGs are a set of 17 goals and 169 targets aimed at resolving an array of social, economic and environmental challenges. Covering the next 15 years, the SDGs have replaced the Millennium Development Goals whose own 15-year lifespan expired last year.

The new SDGs, and the broader sustainability agenda, go much farther than the MDGs in addressing the root causes of poverty and the universal need for development that works for all people.

The MDGs, adopted in 2000, were aimed at eradicating poverty, hunger, disease, gender inequality, and lack of access to water and sanitation. Substantial progress has been made on these fronts, showing the value of a unifying agenda underpinned by goals and targets.

Even though it is easy to sign on to programmes like the SDGs, integrating them into a business model is another matter altogether. For the SDGs to be successful, leaders have to think beyond creating bespoke programmes that address the SDGs to actually embedding them into the ethos of an organisation and its people.

The shift in the perceived role of corporations as solely profit generators to agents of transformative change has become clearer than ever before with SDGs. Business, from micro-enterprises to multinationals, has a vital role to play in achieving each of the SDGs. This means fostering a dynamic and well-functioning business sector, while protecting labour rights and environmental and health standards.

The SDGs not only present business with duties, they should be seen as a source of great opportunities. Successful implementation of the SDGs will strengthen the environment for doing business and building markets. Even the most responsible companies struggle to thrive in communities marked by instability and conflict, to find skilled labour where adequate education is lacking, or to withstand natural disasters stemming from climate change.

The SDGs focus on the greatest challenges faced by humanity with the aim of ending poverty and hunger, misery and war, unfairness and inequality. Clearly, governments alone cannot achieve this vast agenda by themselves. Businesses have enormous power, resources and knowledge to bring to the fight. Corporate responsibility is no longer about doing less harm, or giving money to charity.

While the trillion-dollar question has been how the goals will be funded, stakeholders are in agreement that bold measures are needed to overhaul global finance practices and generate investment for tackling the challenges facing sustainable development.

Achieving the SDGs not only requires strong leadership and political will; more importantly, it requires citizen’s commitment and action. When people are involved, they are empowered and build a community united towards a shared goal. This is what as corporate we aim to do.

SDGs represent a growth opportunity for companies; it is estimated that consumers in emerging and frontier markets could be worth $30 trillion by 2025, up from $12 trillion in 2010. Therefore, taking action on the global goals could help address several of these obstacles that are giving rise to “trapped value” in the emerging markets.

Private companies are poised to gain a first-mover advantage by positioning themselves as SDG leaders. On the flip side, being slow to take action puts companies at a competitive disadvantage.

As corporates, our core responsibility is therefore to do business responsibly and then pursue opportunities to solve societal challenges through business innovation and collaboration. Stakeholders must not make our world’s problems worse before they try to make them better.

Goal 12, for example, aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns by encouraging industries and consumers to recycle and reduce waste and supporting developing countries to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption by 2030.

Going into the future, monitoring progress towards the SDGs and targets will require substantial efforts, not only from developing countries but also from developed ones. The existing statistical data are insufficient to monitor all the proposed SDGs and targets and significant efforts are needed to fill the gaps that have risen over time.

The SDGs present business with unprecedented duties and opportunities to change our world beyond recognition, but this time for the better. They offer a blueprint for what our society should look like 15 years from now.

At the end of the day, for corporate bodies, business is no longer about just making money but about transforming the lives and experiences of communities around them.

If they can do that, the world will be a better place for all of us.

Joshua Oigara is KCB group chief executive officer and chairman of the Kenya Bankers Association.