CK Prahalad passes away

A bad Sunday to start with. Read in the newspaper, Prof. C K Prahalad is no more. A very shocking news to me. CK has always been an ideal to me. His soul certainly might be resting in peace in the fulfillment of having had a life well lived.
Here is a chronological snapshot of Sir CK's career -
1. Born - 1941 to a well known Sanskrit scholar and a judge in Chennai.
2. At the age of 19 he joined Union Carbide, after he does BSc in Physics at the Loyola College, Chennai.
Works in Union Carbide for 4 years.
3. Joins IIM-A and does in post graduation.
4. Joins Harvard Business School for Doctorate program in Business Administration. Gets his Phd in 1975.
5. Returns to India, and teaches at the IIM-A
6. Later he returns to the United States, where he held position of the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business in the University of Michigan
7. 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 authored several international bestsellers, including:
"Competing for the Future" 1994,
"The Future of Competition," 2004 and
"The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits," Wharton School Publishing, 2004.
"The New Age of Innovation."
He was co-founder and became CEO of Praja Inc. The goals of the company ranged from allowing common people to access information without restriction to providing a testbed for various management ideas.

8.  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 was a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission of the United Nations on Private Sector and Development. He was the first recipient of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for contributions to Management and Public Administration presented by the President of India in 2000.

My introduction to CK was through his book - "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid". I read this book in the year 2007. This book was a major inflection point in my outlook towards business. This book discusses a revolutionary paradigm of creating business value, working with the poorest communities. Prahalad coined the word - "The Bottom of the Pyramid". Since this book was out, there had been innumerable research and papers written on this aspect. A book which is worth reading.

Prof Prahalad has not only made India proud with his works, but also the entire community at the bottom of the pyramid, through out the world. It is rightly said that the words of a teacher impacts world in many ways, through eternity. Sir - Although you are not there around, your life, your thoughts, your insights will continue to inspire the world.

______________________________________________

Copy Right © All rights reserved - Samrat Kar