The social entrepreneurs are governments' best friends.

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.

Good entrepreneurs can manage, but no one but an entrepreneur can entrepreneur, let alone help build and lead the world's community of leading social entrepreneurs and their top business entrepreneur allies.

The first - the most obvious (test of a true social entrepreneur) - is are they possessed, really possessed by an idea... The idea - making it happen across society - is something they are married to in the full sense of the word. One key test of that is this: Is this an idea that you see growing out of their whole life? I get very, very suspicious when I see someone who had an idea two years ago. It just doesn't ring true. Because with the typical entrepreneur you can see the roots of the interest when they're very young. There's a real coherence to people's lives.

Entrepreneurial quality - is by far the toughest (criterion for a social entrepreneur).. For every one thousand people who are creative and altruistic and energetic, there's probably only one who fits this criterion, or maybe even less than that. By this criterion...we do not mean someone who can get things done. 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.

Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.