On April 16, 2010 the business community lost a teacher, mentor, and a leading management thinker when C.K. Prahalad passed away at the early age of 69. Prahalad was an incredibly prolific writer; his thoughts were far reaching, highly penetrative, and will leave an indelible impression on those who have read his work or who have been lucky to hear Prahalad's words in person.
"I work hard and I work quickly," Prahalad told Adi Ignatius, Harvard Business Review blogger, when asked how a single man could create so much literature. "But once I'm done with a project, I like to move on to a new one, and leave it to my collaborators to deal with the legacy of the last one."
C.K. Prahalad was known as a management guru around the world and was perhaps made most popular by his theory about "the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid," a concept that is followed by many emerging market corporations. His book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits was a New York Times bestseller and was what catapulted him to management fame.
In "C.K. Prahalad: Thoughts and Remembrances," a Wall Street Journal article dedicated to "one of the world's best-known management experts and authors," the dean of the Indian School of Business, Ajit Rangnekar, says of his experience with Prahalad: "He has always been a close friend and inspiration for the school. We have been motivated by his philosophy to reach out and make a difference to the people who have remained untouched by the fruits of economic growth."
Prahalad was a graduate of Harvard Business School class of '72. He spent much of his career on the faculty at Michigan's Ross School of Business.
Prahalad was a man widely respected and appreciated. "He had the rarest of combinations: deep insights coupled with compassion and practical relevance," explains Morten T. Hansen on the Harvard Business Review's special memorial website. "His path was not one filled with trivial academic articles but one of big ideas that moved leaders, academics and the world."
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