CK Prahalad dead: Dr. C K Prahalad Top 10 Management Business Thinker died on April 16, 2010 because of short illness. CK Prahalad worked in the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan. Prahalad born into a Madhva brahmin family in 1941 and servived with wife, Gayatri and two children.
He is a globally known figure and has consulted with the top management of many of the world’s foremost companies. His research specializes in corporate strategy and the role and value added of top management in large, diversified, multinational corporations.
At Harvard Business School,Prahalad wrote a doctoral thesis on multinational management in just two and a half years, graduating with a D.B.A. degree in 1975.
He then returned to India, where he taught at his alma-mater Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He returned to the United States, to the Ross School of Business University of Michigan where he is currently a Distinguished University Professor.
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 testbed for various management ideas. The company eventually laid off 1/3rd of its workforce and was sold to TIBCO. He is still on the board of TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs.
Prahalad has been among top ten management thinkers 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.
Honors and Awards
- In 2009, he was awarded Pravasi Bharatiya Sammaan
- In 2009 he was conferred Padma Bhushan ‘third in the hierarchy of civilian awards’ by the Government of India.
- In 2009 he was named the world’s most influential business thinker on The Thinkers 50 list, published by The Times