How Do You Find Your Passion and How Do You Pursue It?

Instead of thinking about the passion, expalins Komisar, free yourself to think of a portfolio of passions. Marry this portfolio with the opportunities in front of you, he says. Think of it as a quest towards which you are moving in the right direction, he adds.

Reid Hoffman (Linked In) Tells Charlie Rose: “Every Individual Is Now An Entrepreneur.”

Reid Hoffman is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. He worked at Paypal, founded LinkedIn, and invested in dozens more.

Last night, he appeared on Charlie Rose, where he talks about the rise of social networking in general, and LinkedIn’s success in particular (it is adding one million professionals every 17 days and is emerging as a “low cost provider of really good hiring services”).

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10128

Kalpana Saroj - India's original Slumdog Billionaire

You could call her India's real life slumdog billionaire. Kalpana Saroj, a Dalit woman who broke social shackles and left her ramshackle home in the poorest part of her village 26 years ago to begin life afresh, today heads a Rs.3 billion (Rs.300 crore/$60 million) business enterprise.

From the daughter of a Dalit police havaldar in Vidarbha's Akola district to chairmanship of a Rs68 crore company, it has been an eventful journey for Kalpana Saroj. To her credit is the revival of the defunct Kamani Tubes Limited.

Today, Saroj presides over her building construction, sugar, steel and brass-tubes manufacture business. She has no elitist education or background to speak of, yet the wall behind her table has photographs of her with international celebrities. Among them is a photo of her first meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Her life is indeed a saga of struggle, hard work and resultant success. Married off at 12 to a 22-year-old man, Saroj fled the violence of abusive in-laws within months of her marriage and returned to her parents in village Ruparkheda. She resolved to complete her schooling and "make something of her life".

She tried joining the police force at age 13, but failed. Downcast, she tried her hand at nursing, tailoring and other odd jobs but only succeeded in antagonising the villagers by these attempts 'to step beyond her social boundaries'.

Finally, at 22, she left Ruparkheda for Mumbai. She married again, but in 1989, her husband died. All that she inherited was an ailing steel-cupboard manufacture business. By sheer dint of effort, the mother-of-two revived the sick firm. One thing led to another. Saroj dabbled with politics, started a construction company, made profits, bought sugar and steel mills and determined her own path to prosperity.

In 2002, she saw workers at the defunct Kamani Tubes Limited dying of poverty and sickness. In March 2006, she bid for and bought the company with accumulated debts of Rs160 crore including unpaid wages of Rs 50 crore.

"I have seen poverty. I have risen out of it myself. So I was confident I could improve their lot," says Saroj.

"The government had given Saroj madam three years to pay our accumulated wages of Rs50 crore. She paid them off in three months and added an ex-gratia payment of Rs2.40 crore towards PF and wages till date," says Govind Khatmol, secretary, Kamani Kamgar AU Sahkari Society.

Knowing that money paid in instalments was no good to anyone, Saroj convinced a group of financiers to pay off the workers' dues at one go. "I thought if each man received a lakh or two, he could put it to good use," says Saroj, who is as earthy as they come. Her only concession to vanity is gold ornaments which set off her no-nonsense attire with élan. Saroj has done her share of social work. She speaks with obvious pleasure of her visit to Kargil to encourage the jawans. "Saroj was ready to join the war, but it ended the very next morning. She became the good-luck mascot of the Maratha Regiment," says Manu Gore, her friend and business partner.

Saroj draws her strength from her roots, her painful past and simplicity of Buddhism. "Buddhism says, find your own path. Experience, and then accept it," she says.

Turnaround tale

In 2002, Saroj offered to buy the sick Kamani Tubes Private Ltd, once a brand leader in non-ferrous tubes.

The company had suffered since 1975 with internecine feuds and litigation. Working long hours at half pay took its toll on the 566 company workers. The company finances deteriorated further. In early 1997, Kamani Tubes ceased production. Ninety-three workers died of penury.

On March 21, 2006, Saroj bought the company. Between June 15 to 18, 2006, she paid off workers' dues and provident fund claims and even gave them ex-gratia payments.

Social Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are essential drivers of innovation and progress. In the business world, they act as engines of growth, harnessing opportunity and innovation to fuel economic advancement. Social entrepreneurs act similarly, tapping inspiration and creativity, courage and fortitude, to seize opportunities that challenge and forever change established, but fundamentally inequitable systems.

Distinct from a business entrepreneur who sees value in the creation of new markets, the social entrepreneur aims for value in the form of transformational change that will benefit disadvantaged communities and ultimately society at large. Social entrepreneurs pioneer innovative and systemic approaches for meeting the needs of the marginalized, the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised – populations that lack the financial means or political clout to achieve lasting benefit on their own.

Throughout history, such individuals have introduced solutions to seemingly intractable social problems, fundamentally improving the lives of countless individuals by changing the way critical systems operate. Florence Nightingale and Maria Montessori offer two prominent historical examples. Muhammad Yunus, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, is a more recent example. He began offering microloans to impoverished people in Bangladesh in 1976, thereby empowering them to become economically self-sufficient and proving the microcredit model that has now been replicated around the world.

While social entrepreneurship isn’t a new concept, it has gained renewed currency in a world characterized by a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots. With this heightened visibility, social entrepreneurs at the forefront of the movement are distinguishing themselves from other social venture players in terms of ultimate impact.

One example is social entrepreneur Bunker Roy, who created the Barefoot College in rural communities in India to train illiterate and semiliterate men and women, whose lack of educational qualifications keeps them mired in poverty. Today Barefoot College graduates include teachers, health workers and architects who are improving communities across India, including 450 "barefoot" engineers who have installed and maintain solar-electrification systems in 547 villages that reach nearly 100,000 people.

Another example is Ann Cotton, who started the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) in 1993 to achieve the simple goal of ensuring an education for young girls in Africa whose families cannot afford school fees. By establishing a sustainable model that provides community support for girls to go to school, start businesses and return to their communities as leaders, CAMFED has broken the cycle of poverty for hundreds of thousands of young women in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania. In 2006 alone, more than 300,000 children benefited from education programs supported by a network of more than 5,100 young women who have themselves benefited from CAMFED-supported education and microfinance programs.

These and other social entrepreneurs are solution-minded pragmatists who are not afraid to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems. They recognize the extraordinary potential in the billions of poor people who inhabit the planet, and they are absolutely committed to helping them use their talents and abilities to achieve their potential. Social entrepreneurs use inspiration, creativity, courage, fortitude and, most importantly, direct action, to create a new reality – a new equilibrium – that results in enduring social benefit and a better future for everyone.