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Global Business: Upending the Pyramid: Remembering CK Prahalad

27/04/2010

Upending the Pyramid: Remembering CK Prahalad

BBC World Service - Global Business, Upending the Pyramid: Remembering CK Prahalad

Peter Day remembers an influential management thinker.

Peter Day revisits interviews with the management thinker CK Prahalad, who died recently.

In a changed to the advertised programme, this week's programme is a tribute to the influential management thinker Professor CK Prahalad, who died on April 16th in San Diego, California at the age of 68 after a short illness.  
Professor Prahalad was born in India, but he made his name in the USA as a management expert at Harvard and the University of Michigan's Ross Business School. With Gary Hamel he devised the concept of corporate core competence which became a watchword for international business when it was published in their book "Competing for the Future" in 1994. 
But CK Prahalad went on to produce an even more influential idea. In 2002 Peter Day interviewed Prof Prahalad about his Harvard Business Review article on what he called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid..the profits multinational companies could make by turning their attention to producing goods and services for the global poor. This became a best-selling book two years later, and it had a very big impact on the way developing markets were seen by companies, bankers, politicfians and policy makers all over the world. 
This edition listens again to Professor Prahalad's thoughts about the rise of the new developing world consumer and the impact of on the companies, countries and non government organisations. His ideas change the way the rich half of the world  thinks about the poor half, and they will resonate long after his death.

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