C. K. Prahalad

C. K. Prahalad - Toolshero

C. K. Prahalad (1942-2010) was determined to shake managers free of their “dominant logic” and deeply held assumptions. He was a provocative thinker who regularly produced startling insights that managers would never have considered. C. K. Prahalad is also famous for his contribution on the development of the Core Competence Model and Co-creation.

Biography C. K. Prahalad

Prahalad was born in India and a graduate of the Indian School of Management (MBA), as well as a DBA from the Harvard Business School.

In addition to his scientific career as a Professor at the University Of Michigan Ross School Of Business, Prahalad also worked as an international business consultant. He worked with companies such as: Oracle, TRW, Unilever, AT&T and Cargill.

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In the 1990s C. K. Prahalad helped save the Dutch company Philips. He served as advisor to CEO Jan Timmer and he designed operation Centurion, which took 2 to 3 years, to help save Philips.

C. K. Prahalad became particularly known for the work he conducted with Gary Hamel. They carried out scientific and empirical research in the area of Core Competence Model. The results of this research formed the basis for the emergence of outsourcing. His research was mainly focused on the best ‘next practices, corporate strategies and the role of top management in multinational organizations.

C. K. Prahalad ‘s last work focused on the poor in society: 4 billion people who are living below the poverty line. This idea is reflected in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2002), in which he explained this using the motto “eradicating poverty through profits”.

C. K. Prahalad died in 2010 from a lung illness at the age of 68.

Quotes by C. K. Prahalad

  1. “The essence of strategy lies in creating tomorrow’s competitive advantages faster than competitors can mimic the ones you possess today.”
  2. “Executives are constrained not by resources, but by their imagination.”
  3. “Never accept silence as agreement because you’ll regret it later.”
  4. “Strategy is about stretching limited resources to fit ambitious aspirations.”
  5. “Under certain circumstances, it offers new, unexpected, or long overlooked value.”
  6. “There’s a heightened awareness o fthe need to be, and to be seen as, a good corporate citizen.”
  7. “If you are honest about helping others rather than showing how smart you are, things are very easy.”
  8. “A company surrenders today’s businesses when it gets smaller faster than it gets better. A company surrenders tomorrow’s business when it gets better without getting different.”
  9. “Laggards follow the path of greatest familiarity. Challengers on the other hand follow the path of greatest opportunity where it leads.”
  10. “An industry full of clones is an opportunity for any company that isn’t locked into the dominant managerial frame.”
  11. “When the poor at the BOP are treated as consumers, they can reap the benefits of respect, choice, and self-esteem and have an opportunity to climb out of the poverty trap.”
  12. “The problem of poverty must force us to innovate, not claim “rights to impose our solutions.”
  13. “BOP consumer problems cannot be solved with old technologies.”

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Publications and books by C. K. Prahalad et al.

  • 2013. Creating global strategic capability. Strategies in Global Competition, Routledge, Abingdon, 5-39.
  • 2010. Innovation’s holy grail. Harvard Business Review, 88(7/8), 132-141.
  • 2009. Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation. Harvard business review, 87(9), 56-64.
  • 2008, 1998. The end of corporate imperialism. Harvard Business Review Press.
  • 2008. The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks. McGraw-Hill.
  • 2007. Cocreating business’s new social compact. Harvard business review, 85(2), 80-90.
  • 2006. The innovation sandbox. Strategy and Business, 44, 62.
  • 2004. The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers. Harvard Business School Press.
  • 2004. Selling to the poor. Foreign Policy, 30-37.
  • 2004. Invited commentaries on “evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing”. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 18-27.
  • 2003. The new frontier of experience innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 44, 12-18
  • 2002. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Wharton School Publishing.
  • 2002. Serving the world’s poor, profitably. Harvard business review, 80(9), 48-59.
  • 2002. The co-creation connection. Strategy and Business, 50-61.
  • 2002. The dynamic synchronization of strategy and information technology. MIT Sloan management review, 43(4), 24.
  • 2000. Co-opting customer competence. Harvard business review, 78(1), 79-90.
  • 1999. The multinational mission: Balancing local demands and global vision. Simon and Schuster.
  • 1999. Transforming internal governance: the challenge for multinationals. Sloan Management Review, 40(3), 31.
  • 1998. The new meaning of quality in the information age. Harvard business review, 77(5), 109-18.
  • 1997. The core competence of the corporation. En Foss, 235-56.
  • 1996. A resource-based theory of the firm: Knowledge versus opportunism. Organization science, 7(5), 477-501.
  • 1996. Competing in the new economy: Managing out of bounds. Strategic management journal, 237-242.
  • 1995. Weak signals versus strong paradigms. Journal of Marketing Research, 32(3), iii.
  • 1994. Competing for the future. Harvard Business School Press.
  • 1994. Strategy as a field of study: Why search for a new paradigm? Strategic management journal, 15(S2), 5-16.
  • 1994. Corporate governance or corporate value added?: Rethinking the primacy of shareholder value..
  • 1993. The Role of Core Competencies in the Corporation. Research-Technology Management, Vol. 36, No. 6 (November–December 1993), pp. 40-47.
  • 1993. Strategy as stretch and leverage. Harvard business review, 71(2), 75-84.
  • 1991. Corporate imagination and expeditionary marketing. Harvard business review, 69(4), 81-92.
  • 1991. Managing DMNCs: A search for a new paradigm. Strategic Management Journal, 12(S1), 145-164.
  • 1990. The Core Competence of the Corporation, Harvard Business Review.
  • 1990. Globalization: The intellectual and managerial challenges. Human Resource Management, 29(1), 27-37.
  • 1989. Strategic Intent. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 63-76.
  • 1989. Collaborate with your competitors and win. Harvard business review, 67(1), 133-139.
  • 1987. The Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision.
  • 1986. The dominant logic: a new linkage between diversity and performance, Strategic Management Journal.
  • 1985. Do you really have a global strategy?. Harvard Business Review. July-August, 139-148.
  • 1983. Developing strategic capability: An agenda for top management. Human resource management, 22(3), 237-254.
  • 1983. Managing strategic responsibility in the MNC. Strategic Management Journal, 4(4), 341-351.
  • 1981. An approach to strategic control in MNCs. Sloan Management Review, 22(4), 5.
  • 1980. How MNCs cope with host-government intervention. Harvard Bus. Rev.;(United States), 58(2).
  • 1976. The strategic process in a multinational corporation.
  • 1976. Strategic choices in diversified MNCs. Matrix Organization & Project Management, 73.

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Published on: 02/24/2011 | Last update: 06/28/2022

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Vincent van Vliet
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Vincent van Vliet

Vincent van Vliet is co-founder and responsible for the content and release management. Together with the team Vincent sets the strategy and manages the content planning, go-to-market, customer experience and corporate development aspects of the company.

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