World looses a Top Management Guru, Dr C K Prahalad
A Tribute by Anurag Khanna, Chairman & MD, Banknet Group

April 16, 2010: Death of Management Guru C K Prahalad has come as a shock. I had the opportunity of listening to him number of times & always came back inspired with new ideas & better perspectives. He was one of the foremost global management thinkers of our times with a great vision. He proudly showcased Indian success stories to prove the practicality of his ideas. He truly believed that India will become a leader & was greatly responsible for changing the mindset of the Indian Businessmen.

C K was born in 1941 in India and had been among top ten management thinkers in every major survey for over ten years. He did his post graduation at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, completing his studies there in 1966, and went on to do a PhD on multinational management at the Harvard Business School in 1972. He taught at his alma-mater Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He returned 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.



He was known for his work specialising in corporate strategy focussing on top management in large, diversified, multinational corporations. Professor Prahalad's seminal work, alongside Gary Hamel in the 1990s, on the concept of “core competence” of companies won the McKinsey Prize. In his paper with Hamel, he urged corporate leaders to think of diversified company as a tree: “The trunk and major limbs as core products, smaller branches as business units, leaves and fruit as end products. Nourishing and stabilising everything is the root system: core competencies.”

His bestselling book “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits” is considered an authoritative exposition of the potential for large corporations to improve the conditions of the poor in the countries such as India. Mr. Prahalad proposed that businesses should start looking at the billions of poor all over the world as value-demanding consumers and not just as those on the fringes of society who can ill afford to buy products. They could do so, he argued, by mobilising investment capacity. The poor must become active, informed and involved consumers, he urged.



Inspired by his vision for an economically vital, technically innovative, socially and ethically vibrant India turning 75 in 2022, CII evolved ‘India@75 – The People’s Agenda’ as its mission in 2009 to create a movement wherein everyone contributes towards the development and growth of India.

A member of India's National Council on Skill Development, Prahalad was conferred the Padma Bhushan and the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman last year for his accomplishments.

We at Banknet Group pay tribute to Dr. C K Prahalad and are sure that his ideas will long resonate around the world including India in times to come.



The Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh in a message said:- “Prof. Prahalad’s brilliance was dazzling. He was widely acclaimed as one of the most influential management thinkers ever and his contribution to modern business theory and practice was invaluable. Professor Prahalad’s bold and amazingly innovative ideas benefited companies around the world, including those in India. He was also a prolific writer, well known for many seminal works in the field of management."

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