I have never been a believer that serious government problems are solved by reorganization or shifting around bureaucracy.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Some amount of support from government and regulator is required when you are looking at resolving systemic issues.
When it comes to reforming the way our skies are regulated, we must be certain that as we work to solve specific problems, we do not create others.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
In my view, a political vision is not a grab-bag of discrete problems and solutions. It is the visionary anticipation of a direction.
Are our problems moving faster than our ability to solve them?
My effectiveness is best placed in solving problems through federal solutions.
However much a president wishes it, a national problem cannot be knocked out with a single punch. A president must work with the problem as much as against it, turn it into a solution if she can.
Moonshot thinking starts with picking a big problem: something huge, long existing, or on a global scale.
One of my big beliefs about Washington is that we highly overstate the power of individuals and highly underrate seeing Washington as a system, in general, but, in particular, we highly underrate the power of Congress.
If the political will is there, we can solve anything.
I believe the only way we'll be able to solve infant mortality - and other huge social problems - is by designing solutions for those with the greatest intent to carry it out.
We live in an interconnected world, in an interconnected time, and we need holistic solutions. We have a crisis of inequality, and we need climate solutions that solve that crisis.
Neither the writer nor the reader can save the world by themselves. Or escape it entirely.
The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.
I think very often problems are so big, people approach problems from the bottom up: 'If only I do this little bit, then hopefully there will be some sort of snowball effect that will be bigger and bigger.' I'm much more in favor of the top-down approach to problem-solving.
If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
It's very difficult to solve a lot of problems from the top down.
Good governance is not fire-fighting or crisis-management. Instead of opting for ad-hoc solutions the need of the hour is to tackle the root cause of the problems.
We need to connect the dots between climate, poverty, energy, food and water. These issues cannot be addressed in isolation
The realization is dawning that government doesn't work. In Silicon Valley, they already get this. And they are bright enough to be asking what we can do to solve problems.
A book I often refer to by Naomi Klein is called 'No Is Not Enough'. It's not enough to be against something. You have to actually be for something. A better alternative. For me, that's about transformation.
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.
We fix symptoms but almost never deal with the underlying cause. We put out fires but we don’t prevent them.
