The Power of Unreasonable People

The social entrepreneur is a special breed, using skills and instinct to catalyze social change, instead of just making a bundle - guided by vision, and what some call insanity. Nobel Prize winner Mohammad Yunus sparked small economies with micro-lending. Wangari Maathi led a movement to plant 15 million trees (she's now on course to plant one billion).

The drive for such unconventional projects is not to dole out charity, but to radically restructure markets - tapping into the economic potential and leadership that has long been at the bottom of the global pyramid.

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." Some of today's entrepreneurs are decidedly unreasonable, and have even been called crazy.

Pamela Hartigan is the co-author, with John Elkington, of "The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World." She joined Word of Mouth host Virginia Prescott to discuss the rambunctious individuals who are upsetting the applecart.

(Photo by Gregory J. Smith)