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FOUR out of five Latin Americans live in cities, compared with fewer than half of Asians or Africans. The region's 198 biggest cities-those with more than 200,000 people-account for 60% of its economic output, with the ten largest alone generating half of that. The productivity gains that flow from bringing people together in cities have been one of the drivers of economic growth in Latin America over the past half century or more. But congestion, housing shortages, pollution and a lack of urban planning mean that Latin America's biggest cities now risk dragging down their country's economies, according to a report* by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of McKinsey, a firm of management consultants.

Social entrepreneurs see problems much as economists see them: as simple inefficiencies. Sometimes, indeed, inefficiency alone is involved - for example, mushroom growers not having access to discarded coffee grounds. But in many other situations, the problem is politics, which is to say the clashing interests of people. Many social entrepreneurs treat power as something to work around. They can be clearer in articulating what they are for than in stating what they oppose, and why. They often take the holes of the system as a given and do their best to plug the leaks.