18.4.10

CK Prahalad dies



The man who called attention to the “fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’’ has died at the top of his game. C K Prahalad (68), the Indian management guru who was a legend even during his lifetime, passed away unexpectedly in San Diego on Friday after a brief illness, leaving a legion of peers, managers, fans and even critics mourning the death of the most influential ‘retail’ thinker of the era.The impact of Prahalad’s management theories and trajectories can be seen and felt in many areas, but nowhere is it more visible than on the storefront of many Indian and developing world retail outlets. It was Prahalad’s proposition that businesses stop thinking of the poor as victims and instead start seeing them as value-demanding consumers that drove companies such as Hindustan Lever and Godrej to come out with ultrasmall sachets of everything from shampoo to gutka, sparking off a retail revolution.

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