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

CONCLUSION

Lessons forTomorrow’s Leaders

RECALL FOR A MOMENT the inspiration for our title: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,” George Bernard Shaw said, whereas “the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”¹ We have spotlighted an array of people who were— and, in many cases, still are—dubbed “unreasonable.” One reason they are considered unreasonable is that the rest of us find it difficult to see radical disruptions coming, whether those disruptions promise breakthrough or could create an economic, social, or environmental breakdown.

Let’s take just one example. In The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler warns of dire outcomes for societies ...