The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf - Brief article - Book review

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World. By John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan. Harvard Business School Press, 272 pages. $27.50.

This is a book about leading by example. The entrepreneurs profiled by Elkington--a co-founder of SustainAbility (where he is now chief entrepreneur) and Hartigan (managing director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a Swiss organization not affiliated with Charles Schwab & Co.)--may be unfamiliar to many North American readers. Most are in the Third World and get little Western media exposure. Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin family of companies; rock legends Bono and Bob Geldof and Grameen Bank microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus are among the best-known names discussed.

Many of the precepts here don't have much immediacy for corporate executives; these entrepreneurs are scraping together programs in underdeveloped countries and face severe funding as well as...