The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World [Hardcover]

John Elkington (Author), Pamela Hartigan (Author), Klaus Schwab (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2008

Renowned playwright George Bernard Shaw once said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." By this definition, some of today's entrepreneurs are decidedly unreasonable - and have even been dubbed crazy. Yet as John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan argue in "The Power of Unreasonable People", our very future may hinge on their work. Through vivid stories, the authors identify the highly unconventional entrepreneurs who are solving some of the world's most pressing economic, social, and environmental problems. They also show how these pioneers are disrupting existing industries, value chains, and business models - and in the process creating fast-growing markets around the world. By understanding these entrepreneurs' mindsets and strategies, you gain vital insights into future market opportunities for your own organization.Providing a first-hand, on-the-ground look at a new breed of entrepreneur, this book reveals how apparently unreasonable innovators have built their enterprises, how their work will shape risks and opportunities in the coming years, and what tomorrow's leaders can learn from them. Start investing in, partnering with, and learning from these world-shaping change agents, and you position yourself to not only survive but also thrive in the new business landscape they're helping to define. John Elkington is the Founder, Chief Entrepreneur, and Non-Executive Director of the international consultancy SustainAbility, Ltd. Pamela Hartigan is Managing Director for the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this what's-next business manifesto, "social entrepreneurs" Elkington and Hartigan run with a quote from playwright George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Using that thesis, the authors argue that the best place to find tomorrow's revolutionary business models is on the unpredictable fringes of the mainstream market. There, they find cases like Jack Sim and his Singapore-based World Toilet Organization, who have ingeniously improved living conditions worldwide (and goosed profits) by, among other schemes, convincing governments and corporations to compete for cleanest public restroom honors. The heart of the book are the case studies, of both for-profit and nonprofit social organizations (many of them in Asian and Indian countries), which are mined for ideas and theories regarding their impact on global markets and local communities. Elkington (The Chrysalis Economy) and Hartigan also give nods to such well-known enterprises as Whole Foods, One Laptop Per Child, and Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8. Written with a business-magazine style, Elkington and Hartigan's eye-opening work and noble intent-bridging business acumen and social awareness-make a convincing case for unconventional entrepreneurship.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

John Elkington is the Founder, Chief Entrepreneur, and Non-Executive Director of the international consultancy SustainAbility, Ltd. Pamela Hartigan is Managing Director for the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (January 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422104060
• ISBN-13: 978-1422104064
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > New Business Enterprises

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Customer Reviews

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41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Power of Unreasonable People, July 10, 2008

By 

J. Davis (Stanford CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World (Hardcover)

I love the topic of course which is why I read this after already reading other similar books.

This book lays out a classification of different kinds of social entrepreneurs, ranging from pure charity to pure business. This is the strongest element of the book, since other popular books have not explicitly discussed the fact that all are possible. The book also tries to provide case studies, and indeed I took notes of things to go look up further. However the case studies are to brief and scattered to really be useful.

I found the book mildly engaging in terms of writing style. I finished it, but I also put it down a lot of times.

If you have been doing your homework in this space much of this book will be repeat, but there is enough new that its worth your time. If you are new to this space of social entrepreneurship start with either of Bornstein-How To Change the World, which is very engaging to read and provides sufficiently in-depth case studies that you feel like you learned a few examples. Another place to start might be Yunnus - Banker to the Poor, also very engaging, but focused on just one case.

41 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable, Inspiring, Instructive, a Total "Wow", March 25, 2008

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World (Hardcover)

I became very enthusiastic about the term "social entrepreneurship" when I made the transition from reading about collective intelligence and citizen wisdom councils and wealth of networks, to understanding that there was a form of energy I first encountered in How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition.

This book is remarkable, all the more so for being the third in the series that started with Cannibals with Forks in 1997 that introduced the term "triple bottom line" (financial, social, environmental); and in 2001, The Chrysalis Economy: How Citizen CEOs and Corporations Can Fuse Values and Value Creation, anticipating the period of creative destruction coming from 2000-2030.

I like this book very much, in part because after 20 years of thinking of myself as a reformist beating his head against the idiot secret world, I now realize I am a social entrepreneur who has turned his back on secrets and is focused on creating public intelligence in the public interest.

The authors made me smile with their early explanation that most social entrepreneurs can be so unreasonable as to be called lunatic. This is precisely what happened to me when I published "E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, and Intelligence" in the Fall 1992 edition of the Whole Earth Review--for having the temerity to suggest that we should emphasize open sources of information instead of spying, and sharing instead of hoarding, I was told that Sandra Cruzman, the top woman at CIA at the time, said "this confirms Steele's place on the lunatic fringe." So forgive me for this sidebar, but this book speaks to me in very personal as well as socially meaningful terms, it resonates with me, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to think about ways of doing good while doing well enough.

I always look for whether authors are respecting those that came before or have made adjacent contributions, and on that score this book is completely satisfactory. It is also blessed by the authors' broad range of examples, carefully selected from what is clearly a universe they know better than anyone else.

Citing George Bernard Shaw, they explain early on that "unreasonable people" are seen so for their seeking to abandon outmoded thoughts, mindsets, or practices. Amen, brother!

This is not a feel-good book in intent, although it achieves that effect. It is a serious book that methodically reviews new business models, leadership styles, and thinking about value creation. It held my total attention over two evenings of reading.

The authors offer esteem to social entrepreneurs with the observation that corporations are noticing and hiring such individuals for three reasons:

1. They see the future sooner than the average cubicle resident
2. They help retain talent by making the business challenging
3. They bring love and fun into the office environment

The authors caution that social entrepreneurs fail more often than not, but they persist and ultimately find means of making a difference while making a living.

They suggest that immature markets are best explored by non-profits while noting that hybrids with blended values are the most interesting forms.

Page 5 is suitable for scaling up and framing for the office. The ten characteristics of social entrepreneurs (severely abbreviated here):

1. Shrug off ideology and discipline
2. Focus on practical solutions
3. Innvoate
4. Do social value creation and SHARE
5. Jump in without waiting for back-up
6. Have unwavering beliefs in innate capacity of others
7. Dogged determination
8. Passion for change
9. Have a great deal to teach change makers in other sectors
0. Healthy impatience (don't do well in bureaucracies)

They tell the reader that confusion is a normal circumstance for social entrepreneurs, whom they define as those that take "direct action that generates a paradigm shift" while attacking an "unsatisfactory equilibrium."

They see a deep and lasting need for social entrepreneurs because coming decades will require unprecedented levels of system change (I add, and will have unprecedented and often unanticipated disasters, many turning into catastrophes for lack of planning, preparation, or responsiveness)

The authors tell us that the best of the charitable foundations are shifting from plain grant-making to sequential investments and deeper continuing relations with those being funded. At the same time they tell us that corporation and private equity firms are beginning to notice the value options in this space. [I think to myself, this is great, just at a time when corporations are also understanding green to gold, sustainable design, ecology of commerce, and true cost accounting.]

I am totally impressed with one page that describes how China has developed new green accounting methods and now realizes that environmentally-related work loss is no less than 10% of their newly-understood green Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

They provide a fine overview of new measures of merit including the double bottom line, the triple bottom line, the Social Return on Investment (SROI), and the "blended value proposition."

On page 20 I see a quote worth posting: social entrepreneurs "bring together natural, social, human, intellectual, and cultural forms of capital."

LEVERAGE is a key concept for these authors, and one I take very serioiusly as they describe how small investments can leverage indigenous capabilities (such as hard work from people who are poor but not stupid), philanthropic and other support, business partnerships, and income from previously untapped markets (at the Base of the Pyramid, like my Seattle friends they are clearly not comfortable with C. K. Prahalad's choice of title in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks).

The middle section of the book discusses three models and examples of each:

1. The leveraged non-profit, which is hard to scale, dependent on hand-outs, focuses on public goods and being a change catalyst

2. The hybrid non-profit that combines non-profit and revenue generating activities, with a focus on outcome generation, empowering the people at the base, community-centric, focused on low cost long term, and on driving the market or pulling more traditional providers into the market.

3. The social business, which focuses on both social and financial returns, scales much more easily because it can assume both debt and equity. We learn that Whole Foods is an example, that it drove the organic market and leverages voluntary cooperation among many networks. Another example combines sustainable organic agriculture, rural employment of the uneducated but willing, price security for farmers, and transparent information.

I want to emphasize the latter: transparent information. I have been persuaded by numerous books on the wealth of knowledge as well as my own 30+ years as an intelligence professional that shared information and transparent decision support is a wealth creation process that scales fast and inexpensively.

The authors go on to discuss ten markets that lend themselves to social entrepreneurship, and I will list them with tiny examples--the book is absolutely a gem that merits buying a reading from end to end.

1. Demographic: condoms, aging, disadvantages
2. Financial: child knowledge of finances, simple technologies, helping poor self-organize for leverage
3. Nutritiional: duck rice, food bank, food waste elevated to tasty and nutritious near zero cost consumables
4. Resources: energy, energy, energy (I would add water, and throw a respectful salute the the George Mason University professor born in Bangladesh who created a virtually free means of removing arsenic from water using a combination of charcoal and steel filings (from the ships torn apart there, see The Outlaw Sea : A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
5. Environment: educatae, plant trees
6. Health: high volume low cost (or free), cateract cures, telephone centers to help poor remotely
7. Gender (best ROI ever is on educating women, see A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid)
8. Educational: end rote learning, cross-pollinate, barefoot college that trains doctors and engineers narrowly and without years of credentialing (my own idea is call centers to education "one cell call at a time," I would love to see India do this sooner than later)
9. Digital: embrace and empower poor as citizens
0. Security: redefine as jobs for everyone rather than high-end military

The last third of the book covers

1. helping those at the base of the pyramid with access (e.g. curing neglected diseases); price (slash to 10%); and quality (e.g. $100 laptops).

2. Democratizing technology (four clusters: basic building blocks, motorcycles and free neutral air in and out of disaster zones; media and media technology; and genetics and biology.

3. Changing the rules of the game (search for my "New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence" free on the Internet). They emphasize transparency; accountability; certification;... Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Businesses are Changing the World, April 7, 2008

By 

Linda G. Camp "TheCampReport" (MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World (Hardcover)

Maybe it's just me, but I could not put this book down...

You've undoubtedly heard this said about a novel, but of a business book? Never. Yet this is exactly how this book effected me. From cover to cover, I was completely captivated!

This is the book for the pioneer and champion of alternate business models. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the future of business, whether micro-or mega-business. Not only does it feature businesses already established in carrying out some traditionally unheard-of practices, practices that incorporate the human element into what has thus far been a fairly sterile business environment, it also brings hope and a very real sense of possibility that the future will see a different model, one that is more adapted to basic human need.

Far from separating itself out as the model for micro-businesses that serve the poor, the new model suggests that basic human need is universal and that this need should be addressed through a new paradigm that recognizes, and caters to, the human element.

Those of us who follow the non-traditional start-up business world will recognize some of the companies mentioned here, companies such as the groundbreaking Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and its founder, Mohammad Yunus. But several other companies of equal importance in changing the way business is done are covered as well, making for fascinating reading for the follower of the entreprenurial world, be s/he mere spectator or active participant in the business world to come.

Get a copy of this book; it's inspiring! For progressive business owners it's a must read; for the small business start-up, it's the next best thing to a how-to guide. For both, it's a way to change the world. Unreasonable? I think not.