As you become more successful, the gender barrier disappears. The credibility challenges you have during your growing up years starts disappearing when you start demonstrating success.

As a traditionally risk-averse nation, India has rarely been at the forefront of innovation. Indian companies have mostly imitated others and became very good at it.

India is a fertile ground for entrepreneurs, given its large pool of world-class talent and resources. India's ability to generate wealth and create social good will come if we let entrepreneurs flourish by encouraging and enabling innovation.

I've had many failures in terms of technological... business... and even research failures. I really believe that entrepreneurship is about being able to face failure, manage failure and succeed after failing.

I think the most important leadership lessons I've learned have to do with understanding the context in which you are leading. Universities are places with enormously distributed authority and many different sorts of constituencies, all of whom have a stake in that institution.

The leaders of Europe always seem to emerge from the same elite, the same general frame of mind, the same schools, and the same institutions that rear generation after generation of politicians to this day. They take turns implementing the same policies.

What I've realized is most leaders cannot reinvent themselves at the CEO level or at the operational level.

Sticks and stones may break bones, but words do more damage than most people can imagine. Especially name-calling. 'You're dangerous!' 'Deceived.' 'A false prophet.' 'A compromiser!' Charges like these by young-earth leaders, both spoken and implied, are intended to discredit, maim, and crush old-earth advocates, including me.