A Tribute to C. K. Prahalad
Businesses are increasingly considered a key player in poverty alleviation, in part thanks to C. K. Prahalad, a pioneer of this paradigm who passed away unexpectedly on Friday.
Prahalad offered a new way for businesses to look at the connection between poverty and profit in his influential book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. A post on the development blog CIPE nicely summarized his work's significance:
A business, Prahalad believed, could ‘make a new box' for itself, choosing to provide world-class goods or services at prices affordable for the poorest people in the world, and do it profitably on a large scale, if it so wished. [...] Prahalad’s work on bottom of the pyramid business strategies has helped the global business community crystallize a new identity, one built on having a positive impact on the world’s poor.
A student of Prahalad's reflected on his impact:
[His] voice, vision, and passion now live in those hundred of companies, thousands of social sector organizations, and millions of people around the world who [...] no longer see the developing world filled with poverty and corruption but instead see these markets filled with opportunity and hope.
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A Tribute to C. K. Prahalad
Thank you for this interesting post.
'The most creative management thinker of his generation'
The April 24 edition of The Economist paid tribute to the April 16th death of C.K. Prahalad, and calls him, "the most creative management thinker of his generation." His ground breaking articles in the Harvard Business Review made him known as a wizard of corporate strategy. He served on several corporate boards and as consultant to AT&T, Citigroup, Oracle and Philips, but it was his later work that makes him of most interest to Global Envision.
In 2004 he wrote, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits. Prahalad was hailed by emerging markets and by Bill Gates as well. He was given an important position at the United Nations. When I read this article in the Economist it spoke clearly to the similarity of concepts on which Global Envision was founded. I have the book on order and will submit a book review when I have read it. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out this Economist article.
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