TED

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.

Monika Bulaj’s stunning, painting-like photographs blur religious and cultural divisions, exploding stereotypes.

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: Follow your passion with discipline, and without too much compromise. Study all the possible techniques to develop and grow. I was very fortunate to have the opportunities I did -- maybe other people don’t have the same chances I had.

But I tell my children: the most important thing is to follow the small illuminations that we have sometimes in our lives, that give us a kind of security that we are sure what we really want to do. We sometimes forget about it, or we are afraid to realize it. But I think all human beings have a certain predisposition or special talent for certain things.

Read the rest of Bulaj's answers here.

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.

James Patten creates physical interfaces for technology-producing rich, captivating experiences for the user. 

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: It’s important to be honest with yourself about what you’re good at and not good at. Team up with other people whose strengths are complimentary, in order to form a well-balanced team. I think that’s one of the most important things. It’s tough to go about starting a business by yourself, and it’s much more fun, and better in a lot of ways, if you can do it as part of a team.

Read the rest of James' answer here.

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.

Lars Jan creates stunning multimedia performances that probe the ubiquity of screens and propaganda in our culture. 

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:  Anybody focused on increasing the quality of face-to-face human interaction is going to be riding a growing wave in the next couple of decades. Do everything you can to increase true face-to-face encounters and the quality of those interactions-whether it’s investing in community programs or international exchanges, in rethinking public space or public transportation. People are going to be hungry for that social contact, in order to counterbalance our increasingly mediated lives. Leverage that trend. I believe it’s going to be a very profound one, and will apply to a lot of different businesses.

Read the rest of Lars' answers here.

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.

 

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.

Founder of Malaysia’s most popular independent online news source, Premesh Chandran continues to connect and empower citizens despite the personal risks.

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:  I do a lot of entrepreneurial training, I speak a lot about entrepreneurship, and I also speak a lot about social entrepreneurship.

A lot of the rules and the experiences of social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship apply in both areas. It’s still about being an entrepreneur. It’s about the idea, the concept, the execution, about resilience, about how to build teamwork, leadership … every single thing you learn about entrepreneurship also applies to social entrepreneurship. I’m very much a proponent of social entrepreneurship, but I tell everyone that just because you’re a social entrepreneur, that doesn’t make you any less an entrepreneur.

A lot of social entrepreneurs have experience in the non-profit world or charity work, and they don’t understand what it means to be an entrepreneur. Approach social entrepreneurship with a capital “E.”

Read the rest of Premesh's answers here.

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.

Anab Jain's design studio Superflux envisions a future where the blind are given ultraviolet vision and invasive species are engineered to combat the effects of climate change. Read on to learn more about her perspective on our not-too-distant future.

Question: There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What is one piece of advice you would give to them based on your own experiences and successes?

Answer:  You don’t have to be this fresh-faced 21-year-old to be an entrepreneur. If you have an idea, you can go with it at any time. Also, talk to everybody. You don’t know who might be interested in your idea, and you need to be looking for resources in places that you might not otherwise have considered.

Read the rest of Anab's answers here.

 

 

 

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.

Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz’s eye-popping magazines and celebrated festivals are creating “pathways to coexistence and tolerance.”

Question: There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What is one piece of advice you would give to them based on your own experiences and successes?

Answer: Be honest, listen to, and support others. When you’re part of a community, it is as important to support others, as it is to support yourself and your projects. As a community grows, there are more opportunities for everybody, so you and your projects will benefit by extension.

Read the rest of Lope's answers here.

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.

With Microclinics International, Daniel Zoughbie is making health contagious, and believes that it’s critical to peace and stability in the Middle East.

Question: There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What is one piece of advice you would give to them based on your own experiences and successes?

Answer: Be very, very cautious with your ideas, because ideas can be very good things, but they can also be very bad things. A German poet once warned that ideas were so dangerous that they could in fact bring down entire nations. At the same time I urge courage: take an idea that is sound and think about its implications. Think about how to test it on a smaller scale, where the damage can be limited if there are mistakes. If it’s successful, one can observe its success very clearly, and demonstrate that success before taking it to the next level.

That’s why we, as an organization, are doing what’s necessary to very rigorously test our ideas using the best scientific resources that we have available, to make sure that not only aren’t we doing any harm to the local communities, but that we are doing good.

Read the rest of Daniel's answers here.

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.

Positive feedback loops can be found in even the messiest conflicts, ecosystems and corporations, according to Eric Berlow. The trick, he tells TED, is to not confuse the means with the ends.

You work on problems from a “network” or “systems” perspective. How has this practice evolved for you?

In the past, I’ve mostly focused on networks in nature: how species are interconnected. Then I began to see how networks could be applied more generically, and I got very interested in the potential applications network thinking had to other types of complex problems.

What are some of the complex problems you are working on now?

Currently, I’m working for a foundation on mapping the structure of successful non-violent movements in the Middle East. In particular, we’re focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What are all the moving parts of a successful non-violent movement? How are they all related? Are there some positive feedback loops, with points of entry that we haven’t thought of before?

I have also been working with a large corporation on the future energy supply and it’s relation to food and water security. If, for example, we replaced all fossil fuels with bio-fuels, they would conflict with land for food production. And if we powered everything with electricity, that would strain water resources, because a lot of electrical production, even renewable electricity, is water-use intensive. There’s a lot of interest in mapping out how we can meet our need for energy, food and water simultaneously.

Read the rest of Eric's answers here.
 

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. 

Minou Norouzi is breaking the rules when it comes to documentary filmmaking. Read on to learn how this Austrian-Iranian found the courage to step outside the lines.

Question: There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What is one piece of advice you would give to them based on your own experiences and successes?

Answer: I’m not a social entrepreneur. But I like uncertainty, being a novice. Usually there is a great deal of fear attached. I try to listen to this fear and do it nonetheless. For me fear of success is as big of an issue as fear of failure, perhaps even bigger. With success comes a different set of demands, different relationship to how you work, who you work with, and what the expectations are. With success comes responsibility. Those are scary things. [Laughs]

Read the rest of Minou's answers here.