I take great satisfaction in coming to events like this one. I know all the stereotypes about older men. We’re supposed to be constantly scolding, “Young people these days!” Well, when I say anything on the order of “Young people these days,” I say it with wonderment. There is not much I enjoy more than learning what you are doing and what is on your minds.

I am fascinated by the ingenious ideas you’re coming up with. Last year, I talked to the University of Washington chapter of Engineers Without Borders. I learned all about the project they’re doing in Bolivia, to help villagers install safe cooking stoves in their homes. I didn’t know about the millions of disabilities and deaths caused by burns and smoke inhalation every year, and I found the young engineers’ solution to be very elegant. Well, I just read a long piece in the New Yorker magazine about a variety of similar projects, all focused on building cheap, durable, clean-burning stoves for billions of people.

As I read about the entries in this competition, I was immediately drawn to the project for the hearing impaired in India. I wear a hearing aid, and I’ve been involved with the Hearing, Speech, and Deafness Center here in Seattle for years. There is no doubt about the positive impact the Center has had on my quality of life. It pleases me greatly to think about new businesses providing similar services to all who need them at an affordable price.

More and more, it seems, people like you are thinking through ways to tackle challenges in the developing world, and that makes me very optimistic about the future.

My son is also very optimistic. Almost three years ago, he gave a speech at Harvard calling for, quote, a more creative capitalism.

Bill argued that while capitalism has improved the lives of billions of people, it has also left billions of people out. In short, the market hasn’t functioned for people who can’t afford to participate in it.

But he is confident that the world can find ways to bring more people into the capitalist system. He believes we can find ways to harness the power of the market so that it meets the needs of the poor, whether they’re acting as consumers, producers, or employees. An inclusive market would provide them with high-quality goods and services at an affordable price; it would appropriately value their products and their labor.

Bill wasn’t the first to come up with any of these ideas, of course. But he’s right that we can do more to bring the benefits of markets to everyone. And it’s clear that people are thinking about how to do so in all sorts of novel environments.

I serve on the board of Costco, one of the world’s largest retailers, and I recently learned about a variety of innovative ways the company is restructuring its supply chains to incorporate the poor. On one project, it just so happens that the Gates Foundation and Costco are working together to help cashew farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Here’s the problem the project is trying to solve: Africa currently grows about one-third of the world’s cashew crop, but there are very few cashew processing facilities on the continent. As a result, the vast majority of Africa’s cashews are sent to Asia to be processed, and then they’re re-exported. That means African farmers are losing a healthy percentage of their potential profits. And it means Africa doesn’t benefit from the jobs that would come with a thriving cashew processing sector.

To help address this problem, the Gates Foundation made a $25 million grant to help investors build up a cashew infrastructure in several African countries.

The result will be higher quality cashews, which will open up a wealth of new opportunities. Large companies—like Costco—will be willing to buy from smallholder producers, because they will know they are a sustainable source of high-quality, low-cost produce.

The benefits of this project promise to be far-reaching and show early promise. Cashew farmers will increase their incomes dramatically in the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Mozambique. Meanwhile, Costco will have a sustainable supply chain and attract more customers to an advantageous price.

The foundation is working on similar projects linking coffee, dairy, cocoa, and fruit farmers to large corporations’ supply chains.

As I dug into the details of this competition and your proposals, I realized that you’re involved in the same kind of effort, but in a very different way. Rather than incorporating the poor into large global markets, you’re thinking about expanding new markets to meet their needs, both as customers and suppliers of goods and services.

Whether it’s hearing aids or safe stoves, poor people demand high-quality goods and services, just like rich people do. And in many cases, they can also create the supply to meet their own demand. With a little creativity, you’re finding ways to structure markets and business models that will work in these contexts.

I’m told that there are a number of competitions like this one across the country, and that social entrepreneurship is a hot topic in business school circles. It’s exciting to discover that there are an increasing number of successful businesses that explicitly aim for social impact. If Bill had it right, what comes next is better lives for many of the world’s poorest people.

One of the great things about this creative capitalism is that it promises to improve lives permanently; based on financially viable business, it becomes self-perpetuating, rather than relying on outside generosity, like foreign aid. Or, to express the idea with another buzzword, it creates sustainable change.

You understand this very well. As important as your social interests are, this is a business meeting. Sustainability is the coin of your realm. Your balance sheet is everything.

Not surprisingly, your business perspective is something you share with Bill and Melinda. A huge part of their vision is a shift toward a broader system of capitalism. As Bill said, “If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business … , we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world.”

I want to extend my son’s argument a little. I want to complement his call for creative capitalism by urging you to be active in an emerging social movement for equity. Because the change we all seek will also depend on a global public with the will to save lives and end extreme poverty.

On top of the business skills you will apply to build a more creative capitalism, in your long lives you will make millions of non-business decisions about how you behave as part of that global public. And those decisions will matter.

I know you know that the world is changing, but I doubt it’s possible for you to quite grasp the dimensions of the change.

At my age, I may have more useful reference points.

The very idea that this competition drew applications from more than 30 countries is simply stunning. I am not sure some of my college classmates could have named 30 countries, at least not 30 outside of Europe. Many teams include members from more than one country. I am envious that you get to collaborate with colleagues from all over the world as part of your university experience.

This new awareness has massive implications for how you will set your priorities in the years ahead. Once you know about suffering, you can’t help but try to alleviate it. Once you understand other people’s challenges, you’re naturally drawn to addressing them. That’s just human nature.

So, standing here tonight, I really have the sense that I am watching history happen—and you students are the ones making it. It is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on that.

And it is worth putting some deliberate thought into how you will contribute to this new order. We are moving closer and closer to a world in which every person considers it unacceptable that, for example, children still die for want of a 10-cent measles vaccine.

Once that happens, people will start expressing that conviction in everything that they do. Not just the business competitions they enter, but everything. The Web sites they visit, the votes they cast, the donations they make. They will think about the inequities in our world as they raise their children. They will remember the world’s poor as part of their religious observance.

Those small daily acts are as important in their way as the business plans that make up this competition. Because once that goal of saving lives and ending extreme poverty seems un-spectacular—once it is too obvious to be the topic of the speech or the driving force behind a business school competition—then we’ll know the movement has swept us up for good.

Let me close with this. I am an old man, a member of what they’re now calling the Greatest Generation. But I have only just realized—toward the end of my life—how big my world is. That my world is not just my neighborhood, or my city, or my country. That the world I live in is actually as big as the world on a map.

You are young, and you already understand how big your world is!

So good luck in your future endeavors, whether they involve social entrepreneurship or not. And keep this movement, your movement, going. If you do, then I assure you, when you’re my age you’ll replace my optimism with your reality.

Thank you.