|
Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad (Coimbatore, India, 1941) is a professor at the University of Michigan Business School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, specialising in business strategy. He is best known for the work he has done with Gary Hamel developing the concept of core competencies. This work prompted the trend towards outsourcing and played an important part in the emergence of the Resource-Based View.
His influence on the business community is significant. He served as senior advisor to Philips CEO Jan Timmer during the Centurion reorganisation, and he has advised Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as well as many other entrepreneurs and politicians. The most important contribution, the concept of key competencies, describes the unique skills that every company has at its disposal. The company’s key activities, business units and innovative products develop from here in an almost organic manner. Prahalad describes this process in his bestseller Competing for the Future (1994).
After a brief career with union Carbide, Prahalad completed two management degrees, one in India and one in the US. He worked for his old school in the city of Ahmedabad before moving to the University of Michigan where he is professor of business strategies. His breakthrough came in 1990 with the publication in the renowned Harvard Business Review of an article on the subject of key competencies.
|
