Unreasonable or Genius..?

"Too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control...."

I know a lot of people who might shuffle uncomfortably in their chair on hearing these.  And admittedly, we all can exhibit a tough demeanor at times..
But actually, the above comments were made to an extremely successful and virtually unstoppable entrepreneur - Wangari Maathi.  
Founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement and the first African woman to win the Nobel piece prize.  And just like all successful entrepreneurs Wangari has her tough streak.
You find people like Wangari all over the world, and in particular in the field of Social Entrepreneurship - a subject on which I've been doing a lot of reading recently.
One such book is entitled "The power of unreasonable people - how social entrepreneurs create markets that change the world."  The books core hypothesis comes from a George Bernard Shaw quotation "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world," whereas "the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
It takes ambition and courage to attempt the apparently impossible - which is exactly the kind of feedback I've been receiving whilst getting out and about these past few weeks in regards my Saltire Fellowship. And in some regards it is social entrepreneurship - after all we are trying to nurture and establish the next generation of high-growth companies here in our own backyard.  So perhaps in some small way we are all unreasonable people.?  But I prefer to think of it in the way Arthur Schopenhauer once put it:
"People like these exhibit rare genius - talent hits a target no-one else can hit, but genious hits a target no-one else can see..!"
Richard and Burt - Pure Genious...

 

Posted 31-Aug-2009 18:49 by Iain Mcdougall

Comments

Jai Popat wrote re: Unreasonable or Genius..?
on 31-Aug-2009 21:35

Definately resonates with some of the entrepreneurs who i've spoken to/heard from.

A lot of them will simply say that they were unmanageable, not because they weren't talented enought to do the work, but simply because they were moving 100 miles a minute! I'm sure all of the fellows feel the same way after the Babson education!

Jim Duffy wrote re: Unreasonable or Genius..?
on 01-Sep-2009 10:46

Unreasonable in whose eyes...?  Corporate boys with expenses and timesheets...?  So many good companies today could be even better by allowing such unreasonableness....  

Perhaps they could have 'unreasonable hour 'with whiteboards, flip charts and people who wants to push the barriers... instead of creative departments and innovation sections...

Unmanageable, special needs or whatever....they are vital to mankind...Duff

Kaylyn wrote re: Unreasonable or Genius..?
on 26-Oct-2011 22:13

I can already tell that's gonna be super hepulfl.

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