India should be the laboratory of global business innovation: CK Prahalad

Thats the message coming from one of the worlds most influential management thinkers Prof C K Prahalad. While delivering his much anticipated address on the Day-2 of the TiE summit in New Delhi, Prof Prahalad said, India can be the place where world discovers the next practice. Indian market is a very complex one, with a large Bottom-of-pyramid market. India should become the global business lab.

In his address, Prof Prahalad laid out four major principles that can make India the hub of business innovation. The principles are:

Aspirations should be greater than resources: thus leading to innovation.

Fold the Future In: Strategy is not about extrapolating the current, but anticipating the future and working towards it, step by step.
Focus on Next Practice: Adopting the current best practices arent enough to innovate, but India should create the next practices
Focus on Innovation, but understanding constraints: This the sandbox approach where India should innovate while realizing the constrains that are there.

In this talk, Prof Prahalad said emphasis on alleviating the poverty in India by businesses that focus on bottom-of-pyramid is important to take India into the future.

Prof Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, is a globally recognized business consultant whose client list includes AT&T, Cargill, Citicorp, Oracle, TRW and Unilever. His research focuses chiefly on next practices, corporate strategy and the role of top management in diversified multinational corporations. His current work addresses a complex emerging market, the worlds poor and the innovative business models that will help end world poverty.