Global Thinker Award 2008
Professor C. K. Prahalad
C.K Prahalad is a management consultant, author, and the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Prahalad is one of nine children. His father was a well-known Sanskrit scholar and judge in Chennai. When he was 19, Prahalad was recruited by the manager of the local Union Carbide battery plant. He worked there for four years. He calls his Union Carbide experience a major inflection point in his life.
He, then went to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), and later after his marriage, left for Harvard Business School. Later, he wrote a doctoral thesis on multinational management in just two and a half years, graduating with a D.B.A. degree in the year 1975. He then returned to India, where he taught at the IIM-A. But his ideas on global business were under constant attack from nationalists in India. He decided to return to the United States, as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. C. K. Prahalad is the author of a number of well known works in corporate strategy including The Core Competence of the Corporation (Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1990). He has authored several international bestsellers, including: "Competing for the Future"(with Gary Hamel), 1994, "The Future of Competition," (with Venkat Ramaswamy), 2004 and "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits," Wharton School Publishing, 2004. His new book with co-author M. S. Krishnan is called “The New Age of Innovation”.
He was co-founder and became CEO of Praja Inc. ("Praja" from a Sanskrit word "Praja" which means "citizen" or "common people"). The goals of the company ranged from allowing common people to access information without restriction (this theme is related to the "bottom of pyramid" or BOP philosophy) to providing a test-bed for various management ideas. The company eventually laid off 1/3rd of its workforce and was sold to TIBCO. Prahalad has been a top ten management thinker in every major survey for over ten years. Business Week said of him: "a brilliant teacher at the University of Michigan, he may well be the most influential thinker on business strategy today." He is a member of the blue ribbon commission of the United Nations on Private Sector and Development. He is the first recipient of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for contributions to Management and Public Administration presented by the President of India in 2000.
Prof C. K. Prahalad is a globally known figure and has consulted with the top management of many of the world’s foremost companies. He is currently the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He is also the eminent academic and management thinker who specializes in research of corporate strategy and the role of value additions in top management in the large, diversified, multinational corporations.
Prof. Prahalad is also known and recognized worldwide as a top most business leader and world class consultant. Among other titles, he has also been awarded the title of the third most influential business thinker of this century. He also acts as a distinguished speaker who has a well known and demanding style.
