Naveen Jain Quotes

Being a father has been, without a doubt, my greatest source of achievement, pride and inspiration. Fatherhood has taught me about unconditional love, reinforced the importance of giving back and taught me how to be a better person.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

I absolutely believe in the power of innovative entrepreneurship on every level. That's why I am exploring ways to improve our education system by making it as effective as a private tutor and as engaging as video games.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

My parents didn't believe in luck. They believed in hard work and in preparing me to take advantage of opportunity. Like many parents, they taught me to be generous but never to depend on the generosity of others.

- Naveen Jain

Many of the problems of poverty and need are really problems of physical infrastructure: not enough hospitals, too few schools, insufficient roads, bridges, and a lack of tools. This is what makes traditional philanthropy so daunting. You could build a thousand new hospitals in some parts of the world and barely make a difference.

- Naveen Jain

We are now living in a fast paced technological era where every skill that we teach our children becomes obsolete in the 10 to 15 years due to exponentially growing technological advances.

- Naveen Jain

The goal must be to expand ourselves beyond one field of focus and use our improved access to information to solve the very real and extreme economic, environmental, and resource challenges we face as an interconnected, global society.

- Naveen Jain

You know you've reached true success the day you become truly humble. That's the day you stop needing to prove to the world - and yourself - that you've accomplished something meaningful.

- Naveen Jain

If we want to impact hundreds - or millions - of people, we have to do things differently. If we look at the problem as an infrastructural problem, we cannot make an impact because it requires a lot of effort. But when we convert this problem into a knowledge problem, suddenly the problem is manageable.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

The most frequently asked question I hear first-time entrepreneurs ask is, 'How do I know when to launch my product?' The answer, more often than not, should be: 'Now!'

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Open-source encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and search engines such as Google and Bing, which people can tap into anytime and anywhere via computers and smart phones, put a world of knowledge at our fingertips at a lower cost than ever before.

- Naveen Jain

I am proud of my kids and happy to brag about their achievements. Their success has been an immense source of happiness for me.

- Naveen Jain

As a young boy growing up in rural India, most of what I knew of the world was what I could see around me. But each night, I would look at the Moon - it was impossibly far away, yet it held a special attraction because it allowed me to dream beyond my village and country, and think about the rest of the world and space.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

True philanthropy requires a disruptive mindset, innovative thinking and a philosophy driven by entrepreneurial insights and creative opportunities.

- Naveen Jain

'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.

- Naveen Jain

There is no longer a doubt that women are just as competent as men. Gender differences are guided by nurture, as society treats boys and girls differently from an early age.

- Naveen Jain

The human brain works as a binary computer and can only analyze the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can't be easily defined in zeros and ones.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

My father was a civil servant in northern India where I was born. As a boy I saw the dire effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially on women and children. It often seemed that the only thing separating me from them was luck.

- Naveen Jain

To nurture the sort of relationships that will truly help propel you towards accomplishing great things, you need to forget transactional networking and focus on having in-depth conversations with fewer people about subjects you really care about.

- Naveen Jain

We begin to change the world when we stimulate long-term prosperity using technology. There is not a problem that's large enough that innovation and entrepreneurship can't solve.

- Naveen Jain

My children have been learning lessons about entrepreneurship since they were in kindergarten, and these lessons are paying off: even though they are only 22, 18, and 15, they have already collectively launched three nonprofit organizations and several new businesses.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Unfettered, creative, and enthusiastic entrepreneurship is one of the hallmarks of American life, and it has allowed us to attract the best and brightest to this country.

- Naveen Jain

If you are passionate about entrepreneurship like I am, you too can instill this passion in your children.

- Naveen Jain

I've given a lot of talks over the years on the subject of entrepreneurship. The first thing I find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that entrepreneurial success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Humans have always used our intelligence and creativity to improve our existence. After all, we invented the wheel, discovered how to make fire, invented the printing press and found a vaccine for polio.

- Naveen Jain

In life, we all struggle and strive to make progress. When will you know you've reached success? A billion dollars is a good sign, but there's a better one - humility.

- Naveen Jain

Go where your customers take you! For example, did you know that Sony's first product was a rice cooker? Since abandoning the rice cooker, it has merely managed to become the world's biggest consumer electronics company.

- Naveen Jain

Neuroplasticity research showed that the brain changes its very structure with each different activity it performs, perfecting its circuits so it is better suited to the task at hand.

- Naveen Jain

Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person's life.

- Naveen Jain

I grew up poor in India, and there were days when we struggled to find food and other basic necessities. Our mother worked odds and ends jobs to keep the family together and educate us.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

Your initial idea may or may not work, but you have to remember that a failed idea is nothing but a stepping stone to a bigger success.

- Naveen Jain

Any time you make more than a couple of friends at an event, I think that you actually made no friends.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

By understanding and harnessing the forces that drive human behavior, you can create a self-sustaining philanthropic effort that reaches millions of people. It begins with an entrepreneurial attitude: take an idea and execute on that idea. If it doesn't work, learn why and build on what you've learned.

- Naveen Jain

Sometimes a faint voice based on instinct resonates far more strongly than overpowering logic.

- Naveen Jain

Education should not be about building more schools and maintaining a system that dates back to the Industrial Revolution. We can achieve so much more, at unmatched scale with software and interactive learning.

- Naveen Jain

The U.S. has spent billions of dollars on educating and supporting teachers or developing curricula but no resources are applied to 'improving the brain' that a student brings to the classroom.

- Naveen Jain

I may have managed to build a successful technology startup that had gone public by the time my three kids hit their 13th birthdays, but don't think that bought my wife and me any special respect from our teenagers.

- Naveen Jain

I understand human needs. I grew up where far too many people lived day to day without elemental needs like food and shelter.

- Naveen Jain

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?

- Naveen Jain

Call it the Tiger Mom effect: In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option.

- Naveen Jain

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?

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Because I was poor I had one special advantage. When you are poor, and basic survival is your concern, you have no alternative but to be an entrepreneur. You must take action to survive just as you must take action to seize an opportunity.

- Naveen Jain

A person who sees a problem is a human being; a person who finds a solution is visionary; and the person who goes out and does something about it is an entrepreneur.

- Naveen Jain

As an entrepreneur, you only fail when you give up.

- Naveen Jain

In my view, the first requirement for success for an entrepreneur is to dream big. The second aspect that prevents entrepreneurs from succeeding is fear of failure.

- Naveen Jain

As an entrepreneur, you tend to see the opportunities where others see none.

- Naveen Jain

I am convinced that only by applying the values of an entrepreneur to philanthropy will you ever be able to meet the needs of the greatest number of people.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

An entrepreneur is not a person who starts a company, but he is the person who actually solves a problem.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

I came to the United States in the early '80s and was welcomed with open arms and given the opportunity to pursue my dreams. God has been very kind to us. My family and I are fortunate enough to be successful and we feel a tremendous responsibility and obligation to give back to our great country.

- Naveen Jain

Why is it that our young kids all across America can solve the most complex problems in a video game involving executive decision making and analytical thinking, yet we accept the fact that they can't add or read?

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

If there is one thing I have learned on this incredible journey we call life, it is this: the sign of a truly successful individual is humility.

- Naveen Jain

If you don't know much about the field, you're able to ask a set of questions that an expert would never ask, and that allows you a very different thought process and a fresh approach.

- Naveen Jain

Technology itself is neither good nor bad. People are good or bad.

- Naveen Jain

The capital goes wherever the opportunities are.

- Naveen Jain

The real metric of success isn't the size of your bank account. It's the number of lives in whom you might be able to make a positive difference.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Success doesn't necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won't win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

As fathers, we all have great lessons to teach our children.

- Naveen Jain

When you're starting a new business, you don't need to know much about it. A lot of the work is blocking and tackling - it's the same type of stuff no matter what sector you're in.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Successful ventures in business or philanthropy are built around great teams who can help us overcome tremendous challenges - and have the right experiences and relationships to do so.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

Entrepreneurial Philanthropy is not just a philosophy or a dream. It is a promise that philanthropy is at its best when it is founded on entrepreneurial zest and agility.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

When your child comes to you at a young age and declares he or she is passionate about this or that, the natural tendency for many parents, out of love, is to simply support that decision. That's the path of least resistance, but it's not necessarily the best path, in my opinion.

- Naveen Jain

Success is not about how much money we have in the bank, but it's about how many peoples' lives we have impacted through it. Success is experienced when we do things which are never done before.

- Naveen Jain

Our education system was developed for an industrial era where we could teach certain skills to our children and they were able to use these skills for the rest of their lives working productively in an industry.

- Naveen Jain

How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

Just as physical exercise is a well-known and well-accepted means to improve health for anyone, regardless of age or background, so can the brain be put 'into shape' for optimal learning.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

I think it's time we all agree that gender stereotypes are simply the confabulation of our own mind.

- Naveen Jain

If you create great opportunities, people around the world will come support your dream.

- Naveen Jain

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.

- Naveen Jain

It's really easy to create a $1 billion company - you just have to solve a $10 billion problem.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

I am really happy to see the number of entrepreneurs in India - not only because of the ideas they have but also because of the passion at which their ideas are put across.

- Naveen Jain

The digital revolution has also meant a revolution in access to information. This puts more power and knowledge into the hands of nonexperts.

- Naveen Jain

Stay focused on the mission.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

Each one of us has the power to be the change we want to see in the world, making the world a better place.

- Naveen Jain

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

- Naveen Jain

It's a simple fact: no individual can be good at everything. Everyone needs people around them who have complimentary sets of skills.

- Naveen Jain

Successful entrepreneurs always give 100% of their efforts to everything they do.

- Naveen Jain

If you think something is impossible, then it certainly is... for you.

- Naveen Jain