Public service and respect for ideas is a recurrent theme in both the American and Australian sides of my family.

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.

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

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.

There are millions of people who can get things done. There are very, very few people who will change the pattern in the whole field.

There is nothing more powerful than a new idea in the hands of a social entrepreneur

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