Few management thinkers can lay claim to having made a difference in the way managers think. C.K. Prahalad is one of them. In Competing for the Future, C.K. (as he is called by everyone) and his longtime collaborator Gary Hamel made such phrases as "strategic architecture" and, most particularly, "core competencies" common management parlance.
As Prahalad, 63, was instrumental in changing the way managers think about strategy, so in his latest book he bids to become an important factor in the way they think about developing markets. In The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Pearson), Prahalad resists the classic view of the poor as "wards of the state." Instead, he calls for "inclusive capitalism" that would include the billions of people who live on $2 a day.
This is a market? These are consumers? This is a growth opportunity? Yes, yes, and yes, Prahalad maintains. His latest book's first half presents his rationale and approach for dealing with the bottom of the pyramid; the latter half offers a dozen detailed case histories that document how to do it.
Prahalad is the Harvey C. Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan Business School in Ann Arbor. Besides teaching, he consults widely for multinational corporations on both strategy and the subject of his latest book. Across the Board editor A.J. Vogl interviewed Prahalad when he recently visited New York.
Subject(s): Management
Source(s): Across the Board (ATB)
Posted: 2004-09-15
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