Best Selling Books by C. K. Prahalad

C.K. Prahalad describes how the world''s low-income markets offer opportunity for the world''s wealthiest companies to seek fortune and bring prosperity to the poor.

The authors explore why--in a world of infinite choice, instant gratification, and unbounded opportunities for innovation--companies still can''t satisfy customers or sustain growth and profitability.

In this article, renowned management experts Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad introduce their approach to strategic planning in the face of tough competition. With advice on tailoring your company''s strategy and developing the will to win within your firm, this article helps you define a long-term strategy for your organization that captures employees'' imaginations and creates a clear path to success.

New competitive realities have ruptured industry boundaries, overthrown much of standard management practice, and rendered conventional models of strategy and growth obsolete. In their stead have come the powerful ideas and methodologies of Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, whose much-revered thinking has already engendered a new language of strategy. In this book, they develop a coherent model for how today''s executives can identify and accomplish no less than heroic goals in tomorrow''s marketplace. Their masterful blueprint addresses how executives can ease the tension between competing today and clearing a path toward leadership in the future.

Hundreds of millions of people in China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil are eager to enter the marketplace. Yet multinational companies typically pitch their products to emerging markets'' tiny segment of affluent buyers, and thus miss out on much larger markets further down the socioeconomic pyramid—which local rivals snap up. By applying the authors'' recommendations, you can position yourself to compete innovatively in developing countries—and to unlock major new sources of revenue for your business. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Named one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine From the greatest minds in business today comes a groundbreaking new blueprint for executing the next stage of customer-created value. C.K. Prahalad, the world''s premier business thinker, and IT scholar M.S. Krishnan unveil the critical missing link in connecting strategy to execution--building organizational capabilities that allow companies to achieve and sustain continuous change and innovation. The New Age of Innovation reveals that the key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time. To achieve this, CEOs, executives, and managers at every level must transform their business processes, technical systems, and supply chain management, implementing key social and technological infrastructure requirements to create an ongoing innovation advantage. In this landmark work, Prahalad and Krishnan explain how to accomplish this shift--one where IT and the management architecture form the corporation''s fundamental foundation. This book provides strategies for Redesigning systems to co-create value with customers and connect all parts of a firm to this process Measuring individual behavior through smart analytics Ceaselessly improving the flexibility and efficiency in all customer-facing and back-end processes Treating all involved individuals--customers, employees, investors, suppliers--as unique Working across cultures and time-zones in a seamless global network Building teams that are capable of providing high-quality, low-cost solutions rapidly To successfully compete on the battlefields of 21st-century business, companies must reinvent their processes and culture in order to sustain innovative solutions. The New Age of Innovation is a complete program for achieving this transformation to meet the needs of the end consumer of the future.

Drawing on Prahalad''s breakthrough insights in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, great companies worldwide have sought to identify, build, and profit from new markets amongst the world''s several billion poorest people, while at the same time helping to alleviate poverty. Five years after its first publication, this book''s ideas are no longer "theory": they are proven, profitable reality. In the 5th Anniversary Edition, Prahalad thoroughly updates his book to reveal all that''s been learned about competing and profiting "at the bottom of the pyramid." Prahalad outlines the latest strategies and tactics that companies are utilizing to succeed in the developing world. He interviews several innovative CEOs to discuss what they''ve learned from their own initiatives, including the Unilever business leader who''s built a billion-dollar business in India. You''ll find a new case study on Jaipur Rugs'' innovative new global supply chain; updates to earlier editions'' key cases; and up-to-the-minute information on the evolution of key industries such as wireless, agribusiness, healthcare, consumer goods, and finance. Prahalad also offers an up-to-date assessment of the key questions his ideas raised: Is there truly a market? Is there scale? Is there profit? Is there innovation? Is this a global opportunity? Five years ago, executives could be hopeful that the answers to these questions would be positive. Now, as Prahalad demonstrates, they can be certain of it.

This case study on India''s wireless giant Bharti Airtel (Airtel) is the first of two cases on the company that show how the firm exemplifies many of the tenets set forth in the book the New Age of Innovation by CK Prahalad and MS Krishnan. Case a presents the students with the history of India''s wireless telecommunications industry and the unique challenges faced by operators in that environment. It also gives the background on Airtel, introduces its leaders, and describes some of the biggest challenges facing the company. Case a ends by asking students to analyze the Indian environment and capabilities of Airtel to determine what strategies the wireless provider should use for growth. Case B gives students the opportunity to see which strategies the company actually pursued and the results of those approaches.