Listening is understanding. The skill of empathy is a must to be able to listen...One can listen better if one sees the whole.

We started Ashoka here in India with a simple idea: that you needed social entrepreneurs to deal with problems that don't fit the business paradigm.

Imagine a world where everyone is really a change maker.

Entrepreneurs almost always have to step out of existing institutions that embody old ways of doing things to build their vision.

The first - the most obvious test of a true social entrepreneur - is are they possessed, really possessed by an idea.

The most critical variable [to becoming a change-maker] is one's willingness to give oneself permission. To break the mental chains that make us small because everyone tells us we cannot.

What is the most powerful force in the world? And I think you would agree that is a big idea if it is in the hands of an entrepreneur who is actually going to make the idea not only happen, but spread all across society. And we understand that in business but we have need for entrepreneurship just as much in education, human rights, health, and the environment as we do in hotels and steel.