As a child I experienced firsthand the severe effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. My parents taught me the importance of education and that it was a key to improving an individual's life.

All the conservation efforts in the world won't be enough to make a dent in the oncoming sustainability crisis our planet faces.

Don't let expertise fool you into seeing false boundaries or underestimating those with wild dreams.

The truth is, what Americans enjoy about football is much of what makes the sport dangerous. However, I believe there must be a way to find the art of success and vitality in football, without the driving the level of impact that causes serious risk of head trauma, paralysis and other life-changing injuries.

The United States of America became the envy of the world because we welcomed the best and brightest minds from anywhere on the planet and gave them the opportunity to succeed.

There are as many ways to help another human being as there are people in need of help. For some, the urgent need is as basic as food and water. For others, it is an opportunity to develop a talent, realize an idea, and reach one's full potential.

Trust your gut instinct over spreadsheets. There are too many variables in the real world that you simply can't put into a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets spit out results from your inexact assumptions and give you a false sense of security. In most cases, your heart and gut are still your best guide.

As a father, I believe that involving children in sports at a young age is generally, a wise proposition. I believe that healthy competition is... well... healthy; that sporting events foster a spirit of teamwork that far surpasses the events themselves; and that active participation keeps children moving and is good for their self-esteem.

I believe our legacy will be defined by the accomplishments and fearless nature by which our daughters and sons take on the global challenges we face. I also wonder if perhaps the most lasting expression of one's humility lies in our ability to foster and mentor our children.

It is always great to see technology leaders like Ginni Rometty, Marissa Mayer, and Meg Whitman breaking through as a new generation of leaders.

Sometimes we never see what failure is and often fail to recognize it.

Teaching children about entrepreneurship is much like imparting any other skill or piece of knowledge. You will provide them with ways to experience how entrepreneurship works, and you guide them toward the subjects or areas they seem to show an interest in.

We owe it to our children to equip them with all the capabilities they'll need to thrive in the limitless world beyond the classrooms.

Growing up in India, I knew all I needed to change the world was one good opportunity, and I prepared myself for it. When that opportunity came - in the form of the chance to earn an engineering degree - I was ready.

Clearly, we are not programmed at birth to behave a certain way based on our gender. Instead, we are trained throughout our lives to conform to our gender norms.

Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing. This focus and intensity helps to eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation, i.e., companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well.

Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing.

Apple Computer would not have reached its current peak of success if it had feared to roll the dice and launch products that didn't always hit the mark. In the mid-1990s, the company was considered washed up, Steve Jobs had departed, and a string of lackluster product launches unrelated to the company's core business.

While most philanthropists tend to flock together and build their teams around friends, family, or others who happen to be retired or with a lot of free time on their hands, a great entrepreneur knows that success is directly related to the quality and talents of their team.

I'm very, very used to hearing no - repeatedly! - and through my experience founding startups, I've learned to view those two little letters not as a final roadblock but as a problem to be solved.

If you know you are giving your best effort, you'll never have any reason for regrets.

Experts are able to identify patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because nonexperts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain's ability for abstraction rather than specificity.

Athletes at all ages are bigger and stronger than ever before. And they are being encouraged - sometimes even incentivized, as we recently learned was the case on at least one National Football League team - to play to injure.

Philanthropy without scale and sustainability is like any other bad business that will simply wither and die on the vine.

Early versions of Microsoft Word left a lot to be desired. However, to the company's credit, it quickly learned where Word fell short, made the necessary changes, and repeatedly introduced new versions of the software.

Investors are right to demand a clear path to self-sustainability from every business they invest in, and I believe we should ask for the same from philanthropy.

Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. While well-meaning, the idea of writing a check and calling it 'philanthropy' is extremely short-sighted and unfortunately, extremely pervasive.

My own philanthropic efforts have always included an educational element, whether it's expanding opportunities to educate a promising mind or extending the brain's ability to learn.

'Being green' is commendable, but I hope that people don't take too much pride and self-adoration because they shut off the water when they brushed their teeth. The truth of the matter is, conservation alone will do little to save our planet.

Don't wallow in brainstorming. Time spent fiddling with a business plan or filling up whiteboards with ideas is time that you could spend actually launching your business and seeing if the idea floats. Launching gives you real, solid feedback, instead of the imaginary 'what if' scenarios dreamed up in a conference room.

I believe that entrepreneurs play an unmatched role and the accelerating pace of innovation is transforming the face of global challenges. You must think about the solution differently when you're trying to impact 1 billion people rather than affecting 1 million people.

Governments take too long to get things done and there are far too many varied interests at stake. If you were starting a business today and needed a partner, you would never choose a large bureaucratic institution like the government.

I have seen humility in many of the finest leaders I have met the world over. And indeed, it is embodied in the warm, engaging and quintessentially successful spirit of Sir Richard Branson.

The entrepreneurial bug had already bitten my son Ankur by the time he got to college. As a lifelong entrepreneur, I certainly didn't want to dampen his enthusiasm by telling him he couldn't do it, but I also wanted to make sure it was balanced with the proper attention to his studies.

We, as entrepreneurs, can be held responsible for our actions every single day, not every election cycle.

Successful entrepreneurs find the balance between listening to their inner voice and staying persistent in driving for success - because sometimes success is waiting right across from the transitional bump that's disguised as failure.

Philanthropists can learn important lessons from business entrepreneurs. They both spend their time solving problems. And to be successful, they both must overcome physical challenges and create self-sustaining operations. And ultimately, they must allow people to take action for their own benefit.

I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions.

Today, people idolize athletes and celebrities - and yes, highly successful and visionary business people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but not the innovators who perhaps have not seen such high-flying levels of success. Can anyone name the inventors of GPS, which has such a huge impact on our lives today?

Just think of the opportunities we can unlock by making education as addictive as a video game. This type of experiential, addictive learning improves decision-making skills and increases the processing speed and spatial skills of the brain. When was the last time your child asked for help with a video game?

I have absolutely no idea about space exploration. I'm a software guy. But because I'm a non-expert, I've been able to bring the software concept of modularity into the space sector, which was never done before.

I've found that entrepreneurial success usually comes through great execution, simply by doing a superior job of doing the blocking and tackling.

In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option. We need to change this attitude toward failure - and celebrate the idea that only by falling on our collective business faces do we learn enough to succeed down the road.

When you experience a failure as a leader, don't hide it - talk about it. Your missed opportunity will encourage others to take risks.

I've been an entrepreneur all my life, and my recent focus is on finding entrepreneurial solutions to address global challenges in healthcare and education.

What separates sports from entrepreneurism, however, is that in business we constantly have to overcome undefined and unpredictable challenges. Athletes train for specific events and conditions, whereas entrepreneurs generally have little idea what they will encounter along the way.

I believe that incentivized prizing is the best solution to help unlock the answers to the some of the profound problems that plague our planet.

Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.

I worked for Microsoft until 1996, till I had a different angle to view life. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and control my own destiny.

I started off with a company, InfoSpace, with my own funding. The company was listed among the most successful companies and I went on to start Intelius and Moon Express. Now, I focus my time on using the skills of an entrepreneur to solve many of the grand challenges facing us in the areas of education, healthcare, clean water and energy.