Achieving most, if not all, of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) will require the use of data from multiple public and private sources. In this sense, the SDGs are the embodiment of what we call “data mega-use-cases”: complex problems and opportunities affecting many different individuals, companies, organizations, and governments. Financial inclusion, crisis response, resource conservation, public health, and climate change are all examples of data mega-use-cases encompassed by the SDGs. But data can only contribute to the solution of these problems if it is readily available and shared.

The good news is that there is increasing focus on using big data to support the SDGs. The UN has put forth specific big data mega-use-cases and has launched the Global Pulse initiative to bring the power of big data and artificial intelligence to bear on the SDGs. Many of the UN’s use cases leverage telecom, mobile, search, and sentiment data from social media. Over the last four years, UN experts and business leaders have met annually at the UN World Data Forum to discuss these and other opportunities.

For their part, businesses have so far focused primarily on economic value creation from data. But with data’s expanding role in achieving environmental, social, and governance goals, companies need to broaden their horizons. Sharing data—from the Internet of Things (IoT) and other sources—with companies and organizations participating in ecosystems and public-private partnerships can be both a key part of a company’s total societal impact strategy and a foundation for sustainable business model innovation.