In the previous chapters, we put forward the view that social entrepreneurs build social capital. We now assume this view to be correct, which prompts us to ask the following questions: (1) What makes social entrepreneurs capable of dealing with groups and societies in a way that empowers others? (2) What personality characteristics are essential for growing and fostering social capital? (3) In short, how do we best describe the people we define as social entrepreneurs?

Elkington and Hartigan (2008) refer to social entrepreneurs as “unreasonable people,” paraphrasing the playwright George Bernard Shaw's quip that reasonable people adapt themselves to the world whereas the unreasonable ones adapt the world to themselves, implying that for progress, we do well to depend on the latter. It has been suggested that many social entrepreneurs were characterized as “crazy” by family and friends because of their propensity for going after intractable problems, taking huge risks, and forcing people to stretch the limits of the possible. According to Sternin (2002), social entrepreneurs may be thought of as “positive deviants,” because, when it comes to finding the best solutions, their uncommon behaviors or practices enable them to surpass others who share the same resource base. Sternin asserts that identifying and studying these positive deviants can reveal hidden resources, already present in the environment, from which they devise solutions that are cost-effective, sustainable, and internally owned and managed.