|
C.K. Prahalad was a very influential business thinker. When I was a student at Michigan's Ross School of Business, rumors circulated that at the end of class a car would pick him up and take him to a private corporate jet heading directly to AT&T or other large clients like Cargill. His wife told me CK was suddenly surprised on several occasions to be sitting next to a client on a commercial flight --it was no accident.
I will admit, I tried to collaborate with CK, but at the time his relationship with the consulting firm I was associated with soured. As an academic affiliate, he felt they should have committed more resources. He was 100% correct. I regret it to this day.
However, his impact on me was very profound. A great deal of his work, perhaps less well-known in the present time than years' ago, still has great resonance. His research on core competence, strategic intent, and other related concepts tackled the biggest issue that CEO’s face: material growth in revenue and profits.
At the peak of CK's career many “corporate strategists” from elite strategy consulting firms in Boston were using a variety of sophisticated analytical techniques to inform critical decisions. For example, choices needed to be made between price and performance, low cost versus premium industry positions, strategic groups or accepting industry structure as immutable.
Most 22 year-olds at a start-up today thinks about defying industry rules through a SaaS offering, CK’s default was to avoid the false logic of accepting tradeoffs of price and performance, industry structure, fixed production economics, industries labeled “mature” -- and to simply ignore the PIMS database.
He used the socratic method to perfection in class, which was a tour de force, that’s not hyperbole. I’ll never forget how he took a house cleaning service and demonstrated how it could be transformed into a far more complex and larger business.
In his later works, “New Age of Innovation” and the “Future of Competition” CK explored the worlds of innovation, co-creation, analytics and the reconfiguration of the value added chain of economic activities. Again, he was highly insightful and ahead of his time. He helped us all understand how large investments in data warehouses and analytical tools, or other big data infrastructure could generate competitive advantage, not “just” business insight for a few technical experts.
I could go on and on, and perhaps I will in a later blog. Listen to what he is saying.
I will admit, I tried to collaborate with CK, but at the time his relationship with the consulting firm I was associated with soured. As an academic affiliate, he felt they should have committed more resources. He was 100% correct. I regret it to this day.
However, his impact on me was very profound. A great deal of his work, perhaps less well-known in the present time than years' ago, still has great resonance. His research on core competence, strategic intent, and other related concepts tackled the biggest issue that CEO’s face: material growth in revenue and profits.
At the peak of CK's career many “corporate strategists” from elite strategy consulting firms in Boston were using a variety of sophisticated analytical techniques to inform critical decisions. For example, choices needed to be made between price and performance, low cost versus premium industry positions, strategic groups or accepting industry structure as immutable.
Most 22 year-olds at a start-up today thinks about defying industry rules through a SaaS offering, CK’s default was to avoid the false logic of accepting tradeoffs of price and performance, industry structure, fixed production economics, industries labeled “mature” -- and to simply ignore the PIMS database.
He used the socratic method to perfection in class, which was a tour de force, that’s not hyperbole. I’ll never forget how he took a house cleaning service and demonstrated how it could be transformed into a far more complex and larger business.
In his later works, “New Age of Innovation” and the “Future of Competition” CK explored the worlds of innovation, co-creation, analytics and the reconfiguration of the value added chain of economic activities. Again, he was highly insightful and ahead of his time. He helped us all understand how large investments in data warehouses and analytical tools, or other big data infrastructure could generate competitive advantage, not “just” business insight for a few technical experts.
I could go on and on, and perhaps I will in a later blog. Listen to what he is saying.