Photo Courtesy of TED Fellows.
Fellows Friday is a weekly series on the TED Blog that profiles one TED Fellow each week. We have asked the Fellows to answer our question below to share their knowledge and advice with other social entrepreneurs, innovators, and changemakers who are coming up with big ideas that can change the world. Read past Fellows' answers here.
Kaustuv De Biswas knows that diverse perspectives create better designs, so he passionately creates collaborative platforms for all.
Question: There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What one piece of advice would you give them, based on your own experience and successes?
Answer: First, you have to follow your passion. Very often we run after ideas that are socially validated. I would urge everyone to reflect on what they are really concerned about, and what they’re really passionate about, because at the end it’s all about persistence.
Second, you’ve got to take small steps. At times we have these grand visions of changing the world. It’s fine to be ambitious and have these large visions, but the step forward is usually with whatever resources you have at any moment that you can start. Small steps allow you to start off quickly. That’s always been the case for me, anyway.
The last piece of advice is that you shouldn’t reason too much. It sounds strange, but what I feel is that most of our significant decisions are emotional and not really rational. Looking back at my life, some of the things I’ve done … I couldn’t have reasoned it out. I would say too much reasoning is short-sighted, because you can only reason with things that you can understand and see. But in the long run there is something more to it -- I don’t know what it is, but I would not create barriers by reasoning too much.
I would just finish it off with a quote from Kierkegaard: “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards.”
Read the rest of Kaustuv's answers here.