[Executives who really understand different cultures are going to be in demand as well, Davis said. "It's not enough just to spend a couple of years working in two or three different countries. The number of people, particularly Americans [who've done that] and still don't have a global mindset is staggering." For Davis, the ultimate definition of a winning company would be one in which a person's nationality is practically irrelevant—where a manager could move from Malaysia or Sri Lanka to a head office in Chicago and be almost immediately productive. "It's a huge challenge," Davis said, "but that's what the mindset has to be."
A third skill 21st-century managers will need is diplomacy—the ability to influence events and persuade people while always being respected and trusted. "Trust," Davis predicted, "is going to become a massively important word [while] power, status, hierarchy—hopefully, those are going to be dead words in 15 years' time." ]
Coimbatore Krishnao -- CK -- Prahalad was born in the town of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. He studied physics at the University of Madras (now Chenai). He worked as a manager in a branch of the Union Carbide battery company, before continuing his education in the United States, and earning a PhD from Harvard. He has taught in India and America, eventually joining the faculty of the University of Michigan's Business School, where he holds the Harvey C Fruehauf chair of Business Administration.
At Ann Arbor Prahalad met Gary Hamel, then a young international business student. Their collaboration ultimately resulted in the bestselling, Competing for the Future (1994). In his recent book (written with Venkat Ramaswamy), The Future of Competition (2004), Prahalad argues that companies have not made enough use of the opportunities provided by globalisation. There is an inability to realise that not only have the rules of the game changed but the role of the players has been transformed too. The 'customer' is a more powerful and pro-active figure. Customers are no longer abstractions that have to be satisfied. Thanks to the internet, they are agents creating and participating in transactions. The concept of value has also changed. It is not inherent in products or services. It can't be instilled by producers or providers. It has to be co-created with consumers. They build this by experiencing it. The only way companies can compete successfully is through building new strategic capital.
Alongside this work, Prahalad has been wrestling with the perplexingly complex and political issue of poverty. This led him to write The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (2004) in which he identifies the world's poor (the 'bottom of the pyramid') as a potential untapped market for companies, worth anything up to $13 trillion a year. "The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time" he explains. A market at the bottom of the pyramid could be co-created by multi-national and domestic industry, non-governmental organisations and, most importantly, the poor themselves. They would then have choice over their lives and the products they use. He points to Hindustan Lever's success in marketing soap-powder and detergents in smaller, cheaper units. This created prosperity downstream through new distribution mechanisms. Too often poor people are patronised, Prahalad wants them to have real power in the marketplace. Source: http://www.thinkers50.com/?page=biography&ranking=1
CK Prahalad at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.
Aspen Institute | 1 hour video Aspen, CO Jul 6th, 2007
Globalization for Better or for Worse: Civilization and the Environment with CK Prahalad at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.
In this, its third year, Aspen Ideas Festival once again gathers scientists, artists, politicians, historians, educators, activists, and other great thinkers around some of the most important and fascinating ideas of our time. As these thinkers present their provocative ideas, they engage a sophisticated and highly motivated audience.
"Developing managers into leaders at all levels is the key to sustained success of any organization. The winning organizations will possess a "virtuous teaching cycle" where everyone teaches and everyone learns in order to provide the ideas, energy and the edge needed to make the right decisions.
This session will draw upon Noel Tichy's 25 years of research and real world application of leadership development at such organizations as GE, Ford, Shell, Cisco and others.
In his latest book, The Cycle of Leadership, Tichy shares the building blocks necessary to help leaders to become teachers and organizations to become teaching organizations.
You will learn:
How to develop yourself as a leader and teacher
How organizations can develop a Virtuous Teaching Cycle
How to create interaction that generates knowledge and maximizes people's skills and talents"
An hour with professor Porter at the Harvard Business School
A rebroadcast of an hour conversation with Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter about the competitive challenges and strategic opportunities faced byindividuals,companiesandnations. He also discusses the kind of leadership that American companies need in the 21st century (from April 30, 2004). Source: CharlieRose.com
You may know Tom Friedman as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author, but a fashionista?! Well, sort of. Tom purports that green is the new red, white and blue, and that our current energy crisis is like no other. Source
Leadership is all about love:
Passion,
Enthusiasms,
Appetite for Life,
Engagement,
Great Causes & Determination to Make a Damn Difference,
Commitment to Excellence,
Shared Adventures,
Bizarre Failures,
Growth Beyond Measure,
Insatiable Appetite for Change.
-TomPeters.com
"In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists" Eric Hoffer, Vanguard Management
Video File, 35:06 minutes
