CK Prahalad, Professor für Strategie an der University of Michig
an, hat zwei wichtige Entwicklungen im Strategischen Management massgeblich mitgestaltet. 1990 hat er zusammen mit Gary Hamel die Idee der Kernkompetenzen einem breiten Publikum vom Managern zugänglich gemacht. Sein Harvard Business Review Article "The Core Competence of the Corporation" gehört zu den häufigsten zitierten Artikeln der Management Wissenschaft. In diesem Jahrzehnt war CK Prahalad eine treibende Kraft für ein vertieftes Verständnis der Märkte mit armen Konsumenten. Als gebürtiger Inder hat konnte er zeigen, dass Märkte "at the bottom of the pyramide", also am unteren Ende der Einkommenspyramide, durchaus interessant und lukrativ sein können.
CK Prahalad starb am 16. April 2010 in seinem Haus in San Diego, USA.
By VIKAS BAJAJ,
New York Times
C. K. Prahalad, a management professor and author who popularized the
idea that companies could make money while helping to alleviate poverty,
died Friday in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. He was 68 and
lived in San Diego.
The cause was an undiagnosed lung illness, his family said.
Mr. Prahalad wrote “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid:
Eradicating Poverty Through Profits,” about how companies could tap
the poor as customers and, as a result, improve the lives of millions
of impoverished people in developing countries.
His work on poverty, and earlier on how companies should build “core
competence,” earned him a loyal following in corporate boardrooms around
the world, especially in India. Though he had lived in the United
States for more than 40 years, he traveled frequently to India to advise
corporate executives and political leaders.
Anand Mahindra, chairman of a Mumbai-based business conglomerate,
Mahindra & Mahindra, said Indian executives flocked to listen to Mr.
Prahalad, who pushed them to be more adventurous in expanding their
companies overseas and at home.
“He would say, ‘I just don’t believe you guys have enough ambition,’ ”
Mr. Mahindra said in a telephone interview. “It had to do with his
patriotism, his very, very deep desire to see Indian brands and
companies succeed.”
Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad was born in the south Indian city of
Coimbatore on Aug. 8, 1941. His mother was a homemaker and his father
was a judge and prominent labor rights lawyer who wrote several books
about Hindu philosophy.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Prahalad came to the United States to pursue a
doctoral degree in management at Harvard Business School. After earning
his degree, Mr. Prahalad moved back to India in 1975 but he arrived just
as Indira
Gandhi, then prime minister, was declaring emergency rule and
suspending many civil rights.
“As a patriotic person, my father believed that is not what India
represented,” his son, Murali, said. Two years later, “they made a very
tough choice to return to the United States.”
He became a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of
Business, where he taught until his death, traveling regularly from
California.
Mr. Prahalad had established a reputation as a formidable business
strategist when he started his work on poverty in 1995, according to the
preface of “Bottom of the Pyramid.” His daughter, Deepa, said her
father was concerned about the lopsidedness of growth in India, which
had begun loosening government control over its economy in the early
1990s — something that he had long advocated.
“India was starting to see some examples that money could be made and
consumers could be tapped,” she said. “What concerned him was that the
focus in developing countries was often on the middle class and upper
class.”
In the book, he focused on initiatives that he believed had succeeded in
reducing poverty. One example was e-Choupal,
a project started by the Indian tobacco, food and hotel conglomerate,
ITC. The company provided computers to farmers so they could check the
prices of soya beans and other commodities in various markets, and
compare them with the prices ITC was offering. Doing so raised farmers’
incomes and reduced ITC’s costs because it did not have to use
middlemen.
Executives and scholars say his research helped encourage companies to
serve poor customers with products like small-size pouches of shampoo
and low-cost cellphone service.
In recent months, he was researching new management styles emerging in
nations like India and China and how to assure that the economic rise
of people in developing countries could be managed in an environmentally
sustainable way, his daughter said.
In addition to his wife, daughter and son, Mr. Prahalad is survived by
three grandchildren, a brother and a sister.
