The gig economy is alive and well, and disruptive innovation has empowered many to earn money driving for Uber or by monetizing their home as an AirBnB rental. But there is a deeper value and sustainable role in the start-up and entrepreneurship culture that is impacting the global landscape more than you may have considered.

Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) has built one of Africa’s best known start-up ecosystems in Accra, Ghana over the last eight years—and now it’s doubling down on a push to take its vision pan-African. As MEST has grown, it has opened up its local entrepreneur training program to founders from Nigeria and Kenya who usually want to go back home after their year-long program. 

As Hillary Rodham Clinton's first senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross was one of the State Department's biggest champions of digital diplomacy, an advocate for a style of statecraft that capitalized on the technology and culture of the social networking era to reach people around the globe. Now Ross is betting on a San Francisco startup as an agent for change in developing nations: He recently joined the board of Telerivet, a company that has developed a cloud-based, short message service (SMS) to allow people in the world's most remote corners to communicate with basic cell phones.