C.K. Prahalad

One of today's most influential business strategists & the world’s most influential living management thinker

C. K. Prahalad 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, innovation and the role and value added of top management in large, diversified, multinational corporations.

You will find that over the past ten years, C.K. Prahalad has been included in every survey of top ten management thinkers in the world resulting in climbing to the top spot of the Thinkers50 list in November 2007 becoming the world’s most influential living management thinker.

Business Week said: “…a brilliant teacher at the University of Michigan, he may well be the most influential thinker on business strategy today.”

He is the Chairman and Founder of The Next Practice, a strategic advisory firm that enables the world’s leading companies to leverage the emerging trends that are reshaping the face of competition.

In addition to his other achievements, Mr. Prahalad is a prolific author. His most recent book is entitled, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Though Profits, Enabling Dignity and Choice Through Markets. The book was selected as one of the best books of the year 2004 by The Economist, Fast Company and Amazon.com.

Prahalad argues that private-sector businesses can help alleviate poverty and, at the same time, make a profit by turning the poor–those at the bottom of the economic pyramid–into consumers and developing viable markets for innovative products and services in under-served and long-neglected areas

Business Week described The Future of Competition: Co-creating Unique Value with Customers (2004) co-authored with Venkat Ramaswamy; "provocative", “an important book full of disruptive ideas," and “what the authors contemplate is nothing less than the democratization of commerce." Although the book was recently published, it is already being translated into 20 languages.

In this book, the authors discuss emerging "next practices" in value creation, including how companies must learn to co-create unique value with their customers. The focus of innovation must shift from products and services to experience environments with which individuals can interact to co-construct experiences. It presents a detailed view of the new functional, organizational infrastructure and governance capabilities required to foster personalized co-creation experiences, a source of value for consumers and companies alike.

His other books include the international bestseller Competing for the Future (1994) that he co-authored with Gary Hamel. It was published in fourteen languages and was named the Best Selling Business Book of the Year in 1994.

He is also the author of numerous award-winning articles. Harvard Business Review awarded the McKinsey Prize to him three times for: "The End of Corporate Imperialism", co-authored with Kenneth Lieberthal (1998); "The Core Competence of the Corporation", co-authored with Gary Hamel (1990), and "Strategic Intent", also co-authored with Gary Hamel (1989). "The New Frontier of Experience Innovation" published in Sloan Management Review won the SMR-PWC award for the best paper published in 2003. "Weak Signals vs. Strong Paradigms", published in the Journal of Marketing Research (1995), was awarded the 1997 ANBAR Electronic Citation of Excellence. "The Dominant Logic: A New Linkage between Diversity and Performance" (1986), co-authored with Richard Bettis, was selected the Best Article published in the Strategic Management Journal for the period 1980-88. "The Role of Core Competencies in the Corporation" (1993) received the 1994 Maurice Holland Award as the Best Paper published in Research Technology Management

in 1993. "A Strategy for Growth: The Role of Core Competence in the Corporation" won the European Foundation for Management Award in 1993.

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.

He was also a member of the UN Commission on Private Sector and Development.

A prominent world-class figure, Professor Prahalad has consulted with the top management of many of the world's foremost companies, such as Ahlstrom, AT&T, BP, Cargill, Citicorp, Eastman Chemical, Kodak, Oracle, Philips, Quantum, Revlon, Steelcase, and Unilever. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of NCR Corporation, Hindustan Lever Limited and the World Resources Institute. He is the Chairman and Founder of The Next Practice.

In his sessions you can learn:

• Innovation and strategy: How to anticipate the needs of customers and markets in a constantly changing world
• The factors that are revolutionizing the process of value creation
• Experience with clients and its power to transform
• Emerging markets as sources of information and growth
• From a focus on industry to a focus on discovery and innovation: The changing nature of strategy
• Successful execution: How to resolve the tension between managing today's business efficiently and the positioning demanded by the business of tomorrow
• How Science Is Changing the Way We Innovate and Create Value