Prahalad, C.K. 1941–

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Prahalad, C.K. 1941–

(Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad)

PERSONAL: Born 1941; son of a Madras judge and Sanskrit scholar; married; wife's name Gayatri; children. Education: University of Madras, B.Sc., 1960; Indian Institute of Management, M.B.A.; Harvard University, D.B.A., 1975.

ADDRESSES: Office—Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, 701 Tappan St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234.

CAREER: Businessperson, consultant, educator, and writer. University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Ann Arbor, Harvey C. Fruehauf professor of business administration and professor of corporate strategy and international business; PRAJA (media technology firm), San Diego, CA, cofounder and chairman; The Next Practice, San Diego, cofounder and CEO. Held various jobs, including working for Union Carbide factory in India.

AWARDS, HONORS: McKinsey Prize for year's best Harvard Business Review article, three times, including 1998, for "The End of Corporate Imperialism"; best paper awards from Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Research and Technology Management.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with William J. Abernathy and Alan Sheldon) The Management of Health Care, Ballinger (Cambridge, MA), 1974.

(With John Byron Silvers) Financial Management of Health Institutions, Spectrum Publications (Flushing, NY), 1974.

(With M.K. Raju) The Emerging Multinationals: Indian Enterprise in the ASEAN Region, M.K. Raju Consultants (Madras, India), 1980.

(With Yves L. Doz) The Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision, Free Press (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Gary Hamel) Competing for the Future, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 1994.

(With Venkat Ramaswamy) The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 2004.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Wharton School Publishing (Upper Saddle River, NJ), 2005.

Contributor of articles to numerous periodicals, including Harvard Business Review, Management Today, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategy and Leadership.

Author's works have been translated into fourteen languages.

SIDELIGHTS: C.K. Prahalad is recognized internationally as a top business consultant whose expertise includes corporate strategy and the role of top management in diversified multinational corporations. He is also the founder of a company that focuses on new ways to use Web content on various devices and a business consulting company. In addition to his business duties and academic teaching and research, Prahalad is the author or coauthor of several books focusing on core business competency and global strategy, among other business issues. In an article about Prahalad's business philosophy, a contributor to Thinkers noted that Prahalad is "regarded as one of the most influential thinkers on strategy in the US. His work stems from a deep concern with the ability of large organisations to maintain their competitive vitality when faced with international competition and changing business environments. Many of his ideas on competitive analysis argue against the supremacy of traditional strategic thinking."

Prahalad's 1987 book, The Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision, which he coauthored with Yves L. Doz, discusses global business management and focuses on issues facing multinational corporations, such as global integration and local responsiveness. Prahalad also teams up with Gary Hamel to write Competing for the Future, a topselling business book in 1994. In the book, the authors coin the term "core competence," which a Thinkers contributor described as "an ability which transcends products and markets, and it results when an organisation learns to harmonise multiple technologies, learning and relationships across levels and functions." The book largely focuses on business strategies and creating markets through a variety of approaches, including using "corporate imagination." A contributor to the Economist noted that "this tome was regarded as perhaps the best business book of the 1990s."

In The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers, Prahalad and coauthor Venkat Ramaswamy discuss the challenges facing companies that must determine how to deliver value to customers who now are spread across the globe. They also discuss how businesses must operate in a business climate of ubiquitous connectivity through the convergence of modern technology. In an interview for New Zealand Marketing, Prahalad noted: "Today there is convergence of a wide variety of industries and technologies: between pharmaceuticals, personal care and fashion, information technology, retailing and banking, and increasingly now even telecoms. So the fundamental change is the conver gence of technologies. Today it's not at all clear what is a phone, a digital camera and a computer. They're all rolled into one. Not only is this happening in digital industries but in food, in personal care products and in the automotive industry. This is new." In the interview Prahalad touched on the issue of "value" as discussed in his book, noting: "We are moving to a new form of value creation, when value is not created by the firm and exchanged with customer, but rather when value is co-created by the consumers and the company."

In a review of The Future of Competition for Training magazine, Skip Corsini noted that "the authors … ask business leaders to create new value by doing something unthinkable for most: put themselves in the positions of their customers. I am not sure how new this concept is, but I think it's a good idea from almost any angle." A Research-Technology Management contributor commented, "The authors … explore the new skills managers will need to learn to compete effectively in this new space, from learning how to experience their business as customers do, to flexibly and rapidly reconfiguring resources on demand, to managing experience quality."

Prahalad turns his attention to the issue of poverty and how it can help be resolved through business in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. In the book, the author notes: "If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and valueconscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up." The author points out that billions of people live on less than two dollars a day and cannot afford many of the standard products produced by companies. His theory is that companies are missing out on a large market by not creating affordable products for this underserved population. Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius commented that "what makes Prahalad's book a revelation is that he includes case studies of companies that are serving this 'Bottom of the Pyramid' market. These success stories begin with a recognition that poor people are like everyone else—they just have less money." In his case studies, for example, Prahalad points out that marketing smaller portions of things, such as single-serving packets of shampoo, has proven to be profitable for established companies. Another company has garnered low-income customers by marketing low-interest loans to buy the company's appliances.

"Prahalad's book is mind-blowing because it makes you think about markets in a different way," wrote Ignatius in his review of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Stephen Overell, writing in the Financial Times, noted that the author "looks to nothing less than a solution for world poverty." As Overell continued, "Prahalad has compiled an array of insightful, detailed material about selling profitably to the developing world. This is where the achievement of his book lies. It takes verve and chutzpah to make a 'win-win' on this scale not sound far-fetched." A contributor to the Economist called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid "a controversial new management book that seems destined to be read not just in boardrooms but also in government offices."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Prahalad, C.K., The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Wharton School Publishing (Upper Saddle River, NJ), 2005.

PERIODICALS

Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, June 27, 2003, "C.K. Prahalad Address at Wipro Forum"; October 9, 2004, review of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Business Wire, June 19, 2000, "Guru of Business Strategy, Dr. C.K. Prahalad, Moves into Day-to-Day Role with Converging Media Technology Firm, PRAJA," p. 2822.

Crain's Detroit Business, August 30, 2004, Katie Merx, "UM's C.K. Prahalad Argues in His New Book that the Poorest People Could Be the World's Next Big Growth Market while Helping Themselves Rise from Poverty" (interview with author), p. 1; September 6, 2004, Mary Kramer, "Immigrant Entrepreneurs Lead New Wave," p. 9; September 13, 2004, DeAnna Belger, "Prahalad to Deliver U-M Lecture," p. 4.

Economist, August 21, 2004, review of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, p. 54.

eWeek, December 1, 2003, review of The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers.

Fast Company, August, 2001, Jennifer Reingold, "Can C.K. Prahalad Pass the Test?," p. 108.

Financial Times, August 26, 2004, Stephen Overell, review of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, p. 10.

Management Today, January, 1998, Rhymer Rigby, "An Audience with C.K. Prahalad," p. 58.

New Zealand Marketing, February, 2004, "C.K. Prahalad on Co-Creating the Future" (interview with author), p. 18.

Research-Technology Management, May-June, 2004, review of The Future of Competition, p. 62.

Thinkers, April, 2002, review of Competing for the Future.

Training, August, 2004, Skip Corsini, review of The Future of Competition, p. 68.

Washington Post, July 6, 2005, David Ignatius, review of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, p. A17.