The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Time to turbo-charge IT: strategy guru

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Saturday, Jul 12, 2008
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Time to turbo-charge IT: strategy guru

Special Correspondent

C.K. Prahalad talks about his book ‘The new age of Innovation’

Digitisation is a key tool today: Prahalad
‘Innovation in business practices seen in India’

— PHOTO: G.R.N. SOMASHEKAR

WAKE UP CALL: C.K. Prahalad (right) and M.S. Krishnan addressing a press conference in Bangalore on Friday.

BANGALORE: Accomplishments are all about the past, so much water under the bridge; it is time to focus on the opportunities in the future, said corporate strategy guru C.K. Prahalad.

“It’s time to turbo-charge your potential,” he suggested to Indian entrepreneurs — and he was talking not about Fortune 500 biggies, but about the “small guys” who by their innovative practice blurred the barriers between urban and rural markets and transformed them into one of the world’s biggest, liveliest mandis.

After all, he is the author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the cult classic that opened global eyes to the opportunity in low purchase power markets like India.

Prof. Prahalad and co-author M. Krishnan, both with the Ross Business School of Michigan University (U.S.) were here on Friday to speak at a seminar, pegging their recently published book The new age of Innovation. Subtitled Driving co-created value through global networks, the book has become required reading among corporate professionals worldwide, who needed to understand the new rules of the game in a connected world.

“New Web tools, from Google to You Tube to FaceBook, allow every consumer to recreate such tools in a uniquely personal way ... we call it N=1. Technology has been a great leveller,” Prof . Prahalad said.

“The other new dimension of business is that access to Resources and talent is Global; we put this as R= G. Intellect and merit goes beyond the country of origin,” he added.

“Our book is not meant to be an advertisement for India — but you might be excused for reading it that way!”

Prof. Krishnan said that digitisation was proving to be a key tool in ways no one could have predicted. In the U.S., one presidential candidate raised campaign funds the usual way by tapping small numbers of rich donors while the other ended up mustering more by tapping huge numbers of small donors through Internet social networking sites and other Web tools.

Innovative practices

The authors saw innovation in business practices increasingly flowing from places like India where the market was so huge and the challenges so formidable. “Don’t look for Nobel Prize; but look at the large number of international patents bearing Indian names,” Prof. Prahalad suggested.

The seminar that followed the media interaction was addressed by Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Managing Director, Biocon; S. Sadagopan, Director, IIIT-Bangalore, and S. Shivakunmar, Chief Executive, ITC Agro Business.

The New Age of Innovation is published by TataMcGraw Hill in India.

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