What is the most powerful lever you can imagine? A big idea, but only if it's in the hands of a truly outstanding entrepreneur. It starts with the person and the idea, and then grows to the institution. All three are intertwined.

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.

Everyone says youve got to do a foundation and legal structure to finance social change. What nonsense!

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.

Organizations must shift away from repetitive-function hierarchies with rules and enforcement and walls. Instead, we must migrate rapidly to becoming a global 'team of teams' that comes together in whatever combination necessary to add the greatest value to the changes underway.

Every child must master empathy-based ethics because the rules are changing; the less they apply the less learning them has positive impact

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