They’re Unreasonable Because They Are Propelled by Emotion

Whether or not we admit it, we are all fueled by emotion to some degree. That said, you find, time and again, that these entrepreneurs have had a life-transforming experience, some sort of an epiphany, that launched them on their current mission. They may be deeply concerned—even angry—about the loss of biodiversity, about the treatment of ethnic minorities, or about the fact that 750 million people worldwide are illiterate and that 100 million children have no chance of going to school. But their passion and the experiences that originally turned them on to the cause do not make them crazy—at least, not in the clinical sense. Among those who have reported some form of conversion experience are people as diverse as Bob Geldof, Bono, Fazle Abed of BRAC, Bunker Roy of Barefoot College, Roy Prosterman of the Rural Development Institute, and, in the corporate mainstream, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott (whose transformative experience came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina).

Yes, some of these people get angry—as we all should when faced with the challenges they are trying to spotlight and get decision makers to tackle. What is different is that their anger, their passion, isn’t simply blown away as steam. Instead, they work out how to turn it into useful locomotion. In the process, they have to strike a balance between passion and effective change. People Tree, for example, is a social enterprise that directs 10 percent of the profits from its ethical fashion collection to promoting awareness of the fair trade agenda. Founder Safia Minney notes that sophisticated consumers may recoil from in-your-face campaigns, so most of People Tree’s designs do not include messaging or slogans; they instead provide information with the use instructions and packaging, what Minney dubs “subtle education.”

As such pioneers evolve effective new marketing and communication strategies, the potential for others to move into the resulting opportunity spaces could grow exponentially.