C.K. Prahalad
C.K. Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, died April 16 in San Diego. He was 68.
Prahalad was one of the most beloved teachers and influential thinkers at U-M. He also served as distinguished fellow at the University’s William Davidson Institute, where he played an important advisory role for the institute’s Base of the Pyramid research initiative. He was twice ranked as the world’s most influential business thinker, most recently in October 2009, by the “Thinkers 50” list of the top 50 management thought leaders in the world published by the leadership consulting firm CrainerDearlove.
Photo by Steve Kuzma.
“It’s impossible to exaggerate C.K.’s impact on business and business education around the world,” says Robert Dolan, the Edward J. Frey Dean of Business at the Ross School. “His thinking was far-reaching and commanded the attention of business leaders. I expect it will continue to be influential for a very long time.”
Prahalad’s work has been enormously influential since 1990, when he and Gary Hamel co-authored an article in the Harvard Business Review called “The Core Competence of the Corporation.” A watershed in the field of strategic management, the article asserted that executives should “identify, cultivate and exploit the core competencies that make growth possible.”
Prahalad and Hamel further developed their thinking in the 1994 book, “Competing for the Future,” which made a case for robust strategic thinking and analyzed how established market leaders tend to lose ground to innovative upstarts.
In recent years, Prahalad had been a leader in Base of the Pyramid studies, an area of research that explores how businesses might pursue sustainable growth while playing a catalytic role in alleviating poverty in the world’s poorest populations. His 2004 book, “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits,” widely is considered indispensible for executives and scholars who wish to understand emerging markets.
Ted London, senior research fellow at the William Davidson Institute and director of its Base of the Pyramid research initiative, says Prahalad was “extraordinarily supportive of the work we were trying to do.”
Robert Kennedy, executive director of the William Davidson Institute, says Prahalad was one of the top two or three management thinkers in the past 25 years.
Prahalad’s most recent book, “The New Age of Innovation,” co-authored with Ross professor M.S. Krishnan, examines how companies can build organizational capabilities that allow them to achieve and sustain continuous change and innovation.
Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad was born in 1941, in Coimbatore in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. At age 19, he joined Union Carbide after obtaining a degree in physics from the University of Madras. He received a post-graduate diploma in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1966 and followed that with a doctor of business administration from Harvard Business School in 1975.
A professor at U-M since 1977, Prahalad earned the university’s highest distinction, Distinguished University Professor, in 2005. Among the numerous other awards he received were the Faculty Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award from the Aspen Institute for contributions to social and environmental stewardship, the Italian Telecom Prize for Leadership in Business and Economic Thinking, Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for Excellence in Management, 2000, presented by the President of India, and many others. He served on the boards of NCR Corp. and Hindustan Lever Ltd.
Prahalad is survived by his wife, Gayatri Prahalad; son, Murali Prahalad; daughter, Deepa Prahalad; and three grandchildren.
A special website soon will be established for those wishing to share their thoughts or to send condolences to his family. In the meantime, people may send e-mails to Prahalad.family@gmail.com.
The Prahalad family will organize a memorial service in Ann Arbor in the coming weeks.
— Submitted by Paul Gediman, Stephen M. Ross School of Business
