MBAUniverse.com presents Thinkers 50: CK Prahalad is # 1 global guru; tells MBAUniverse.com, “I am humbled”

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
July 28, 2016
It takes a lot to be crowned as the badshah of business thinking on the world stage. And when an Indian takes that honour, the whole world takes a notice.

So when CK Prahalad aced the list of thinkers which included tycoons like Bill Gates and super brands like Michel Porter, Jack Welch and Jim Collins, it certainly created a flutter in the world of management thinking. MBAUniverse.com, in tie-up with Thinkers 50, puts a spotlight on ideas that makes CK Prahalad the most influential business thinker of our times. 

Before we look at the works of CK Prahalad, lets read how Thinkers 50 writes about him. Noting the achievement of Prahalad, Thinkers 50 says, “The most influential living management guru in the world is CK Prahalad. Best known for his work with Gary Hamel on resource-based strategy, which gave rise to the term core competences, more recently, Prahalad has turned his attention to the plight of the world’s poor. In The Bottom of the Pyramid, his 2004 book, he argues that capitalism can be the engine to eradicate poverty.”  

MBAUniverse.com spoke to CK Prahalad recently on how he feels after being recognized as world’s leading thinker. Modest and rooted to his cause, C K Prahalad told us, “I feel humbled at this honour by Thinkers 50. It means a lot. Going forward, I will continue on my journey, selflessly.”  

What makes C K Prahalad world’s # 1 business Guru: 

Coimbatore Krishnao -- CK -- Prahalad was born in the town of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. He studied physics at the University of Madras (now Chenai). He worked as a manager in a branch of the Union Carbide battery company, before continuing his education in the United States, and earning a PhD from Harvard. He has taught in India and America, eventually joining the faculty of the University of Michigan's Business School, where he holds the Harvey C Fruehauf chair of Business Administration. 

At Ann Arbor Prahalad met Gary Hamel, then a young international business student. Their collaboration ultimately resulted in the bestselling, Competing for the Future (1994). In his recent book (written with Venkat Ramaswamy), The Future of Competition (2004), Prahalad argues that companies have not made enough use of the opportunities provided by globalisation. There is an inability to realise that not only have the rules of the game changed but the role of the players has been transformed too. The 'customer' is a more powerful and pro-active figure. Customers are no longer abstractions that have to be satisfied. Thanks to the internet, they are agents creating and participating in transactions. The concept of value has also changed. It is not inherent in products or services. It can't be instilled by producers or providers. It has to be co-created with consumers. They build this by experiencing it. The only way companies can compete successfully is through building new strategic capital. 

Alongside this work, Prahalad has been wrestling with the perplexingly complex and political issue of poverty. This led him to write The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2004) in which he identifies the world's poor (the 'bottom of the pyramid') as a potential untapped market for companies, worth anything up to $13 trillion a year. "The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time" he explains. A market at the bottom of the pyramid could be co-created by multi-national and domestic industry, non-governmental organisations and, most importantly, the poor themselves. They would then have choice over their lives and the products they use. He points to Hindustan Lever's success in marketing soap-powder and detergents in smaller, cheaper units. This created prosperity downstream through new distribution mechanisms. Too often poor people are patronised, Prahalad wants them to have real power in the marketplace. 

Talking about new forces of change, Dr Prahalad told Thinkers 50: “I think three forces are changing the world order: One is the co-creation of value we have just been talking about. Second is the importance of the 'bottom of the pyramid' markets. The third thing, which I think is usually reported, unfortunately, as outsourcing, whether it's call-centers, or research and development, or engineering, or IT. What I think is happening is a new willingness of companies to fragment their value chains in search of speed, low cost, and quality.”  

Next week: How Bill Gates (#2) and Alan Greenspan (#2) are influencing the global business thinking. This special series is presented by India’s leading management portal MBAUniverse.com in tie-up with UK based Thinkers 50. Thinkers 50, produced by UK based management experts Des Dearlove & Stuart Crainer of Suntop Media, is a bi-annual guide to which thinkers and ideas are most influential in today’s times. (www.thinkers50.com)