Taking Prahalad's vision forward

A week before he passed away, management guru C. K. Prahalad (CK) was in hospital. Among other things he was working on was a letter of recommendation for a friend. He also dictated his last column for the Harvard Business Review to his daughter Deepa Prahalad, who sent it in. His actions merely reiterated what she and her brother Murali had learnt from their father over the years, recalls Deepa, in conversation with BrandLine .

“He made us understand that if you know you are doing something that makes a difference to people, it doesn't feel like work,” says Deepa.

For those who have never interacted with Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad and know him only through others who have, or his work, one must recommend a conversation with Deepa. The author, business strategist and management consultant was in Mumbai recently to deliver one of the many memorial lectures instituted in her father's name, this one at the third edition of the Leap Vault Chief Learning Officers' Summit.

“The entire emphasis of his work was on who is going to benefit from it. He genuinely wanted to help. And if you were witness to his levels of energy… it made you want to grow, no matter what the situation or the level of stress you thought you were in,” she adds.

CK @ Work

Deepa recalls that her father, who had his early education in a corporation school, never really forgot his roots. This enabled him to expand his thinking beyond the corporate framework, by including the end-consumer across the different layers of the pyramid. The ones made most famous by his work were, of course, at the bottom of it.

One remembers these lines of Kipling's, without the doting daughter's prompting: ‘ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue; Or walk with kings – nor lose common touch '. CK commanded the respect of the corporate czars because the common man was not alien to him.

And with industry experience, he emerged as an ‘atypical academic'. Most importantly, according to Deepa, he wrote not for himself but for people, testing his ideas at every opportunity. He constantly questioned how an idea was going to have mass impact, questioning anyone and everyone, from his family to video crews that came to interview him. The intent was to be able to correctly articulate what people on the ground thought.

Among things that differentiated CK, says Deepa, was his uncanny ability to assess when a situation required detailed help, and when it needed direction.

“There were ideas he deconstructed, and ideas he left open like India@75. In the case of ideas that required action points, he broke solutions down to a point where people saw the underlying logic.”

She adds, “He also had no ego that something needed to be remembered as his idea, but it had to make a difference. India@75 is an example – it was about appealing to the ambitions of millions, inclusively.”

Eye for excellence, family

Admittedly, management was something Deepa, who always wanted to be a journalist growing up, ‘fell into'. True to the rest of his work, CK did not thrust his point of view on people — including career choices on his children. Murali Prahalad holds a PhD in bio-chemistry, and works in a bio-technology firm, notes his sister.

“Whether it was a master of the arts or a chef who made the best masala dosas in Chennai, he taught us to appreciate excellence in every field. And that urged us to strive for excellence in whatever we did,” she recalls.

The teacher in CK helped them discover the potential in themselves, but his style of communication did become ‘infectious' to some degree, according to Deepa. And as a father, no matter which part of the world he was in, he spoke to his family every single day — even in his final years.

The one unfulfilled wish that he had, recalls his daughter, was that while global recognition, proliferation and implementation of his ideas were aplenty, providing gratification, CK would have liked to spend more time with his grandchildren.

Project(s) Prahalad

For the daughter of one of management thinking's foremost fathers, there are some projects that she simply has to support. India@75 is among them. Her mother, Gayathri, is on an apex council constituted to see to its implementation, on the direction CK set the country thinking on when independent India turned 60.

Also among projects Deepa has committed to supporting are the Loyola College Centre, and the University of Michigan's Prahalad Initiative.

Another challenging task would be cataloguing all the writing of CK in one place. Certainly, this will prove to be a mammoth task given how prolific he was. Apparently, there's even more to it.

“He really wrote a lot to clarify his own thinking, to see if the argument flowed coherently. And there are many other pieces of his writing. It's going to take a while, but it is something I want to do,” says Deepa.

It's still early days, and there isn't clarity on whether this comprehensive catalogue of CK's work will manifest itself as a book or in a digital form. But it is in the works.

Passion for India

CK's passion for India is well known, consummately articulated in the India@75 Vision spelt out inclusively by CK, CII and other partners. But the Indian in CK never ceased to show up, even in his other work. Whether it was in the contextualisation of fortune at the bottom of the pyramid or core competency, the late guru's love for his home country is only too well known. His daughter agrees, and echoes another view point that is well established: “People who worked with him know well that he made people outside think differently about India.”

She adds, “Personally, I have lived only for a year in India, when my parents came to IIM, but we came in once or twice a year. We share the emotional stake that my father had, as people who deeply care about what happens here,” she notes.

Deepa admits to not having command over any Indian language and is determined to ensure that her son speaks at least one Indian language well. Language is only the start of the story.

“We would certainly want that in 2022, we are able to show our children an empowered India, and tell them that this is part of the change their grandfather wanted to see, and helped create,” she surmises.

Key elements from CII’s Vision 2022 – India@75, of which C. K. Prahalad was the driving force:

200 million graduates

500 million certified and skilled technicians

Universal literacy

30 of Fortune 100 firms from India

10 per cent of global trade from India

India a source for global innovation; bottom of the pyramid a source for global

innovations

Access to a balanced meal for all

Easy and affordable access to wellequipped and serviceable healthcare for all

500 world-class cities through planned urbanisation

India a global benchmark for sustainable development and environmental conservation

India – the new moral voice for people around the world

Transparent, accountable and efficient public administration for all

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