An important new book hits shelves (and Amazon wish lists) today.  The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World [1] is co-authored by John Elkington [2] (of SustainAbility) and Pamela Hartigan [3] (of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship).

I received an advance copy of the book, and am working on a comprehensive review for NextBillion.net to be posted later today.  My first impression: the authors have done a good job blending the stories of social entrepreneurs into a robust analytical framework that helps take the reader beyond the specifics of a particular enterprise.  In that sense, The Power of Unreasonable People feels a bit like a sequel to David Bornstein's groundbreaking book, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas [4].  First published in 2004, Bornstein's book created the same sort of momentum among the social entrepreneurship set as C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid [5] did for the BoP community around the same time.

The Power of Unreasonable People [6] deserves much more than a simple comparison, however.  My full review will be up later; in the mean time, check out what others have to say:

Press Release [7]
The Financial Times [8]
The Economist [9]