We are living in incredible times. Incredibly scary and incredibly exciting: On one hand we face issues such as three billion people living in poverty, 2.5 billion people without access to sanitation and 800 million people who don’t have access to clean drinking water. On the other hand we experience innovation happening at an ever increasing pace, allowing us to touch more people in less time. There are now seven billion mobile phone connections on a planet with 7.1 billion people; we grow human tissue in a petri dish; we program DNA and 3D print complete houses out of concrete in less than 24 hours.

The American psychologist Abraham Maslow (who created the famous “hierarchy of needs”) once said: “Everyone I know who is happy is working well at something they consider important.”

You have an incredible opportunity. You, more than any generation before you, can change the world, rewrite the course of human history. You have the tools, the education, the network. You are growing up in the most exciting times ever. All it takes is to allow yourself to go where your heart tells you to go, to make the leap into the unknown and trust in yourself and the process. You have little to lose and much to gain.

The future is a renewable resource: Every morning you get a new chance to do something which is important to you, something which will make you happy.

This is your world. Start. Now.

(This Call to Arms was originally published as a contribution to the Symposium Oeconomicum 2014 in Münster, Germany)