Those who question the importance of social entrepreneurs, however, say they are simply being
realistic. While entrepreneurs capture imaginations and tug at heartstrings, large fi rms are
quietly doing the work of creating stable jobs for workers and low-cost products for consumers.
“The greatest agents for sustainable change are unlikely to be [social entrepreneurs], interesting
though they are,” opined the Jan. 31, 2008, issue of The Economist in its review of John Elkington
and Pamela Hartigan’s book, The Power of Unreasonable People. “They are much more likely to be the entirely reasonable people, often working for large companies,
who see ways to create better products or reach new markets, and
have the resources to do so.” When it comes to the creation of opportunity
and value, this thinking goes, the ongoing contributions of
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. dwarf those of a dozen
Grameen Banks. To argue otherwise is to place sentimentality above
the hard logic of scale