Those who question the importance of social entrepreneurs, however, say they are simply being realistic. While entrepreneurs capture imaginations and tug at heartstrings, large firms 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