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Pearson

Rs 650

There is a story,of doubtful historical veracity,about Christopher Columbus and an egg. Once he discovered America,his critics argued that he had done nothing great. Thereupon,Columbus asked them to make an egg stand on its tip. When they failed,Columbus tapped it so that an end broke and became flat. The egg could then stand. True or not,the story shows how a brilliant idea may seem obvious,post facto. C.K. Prahalad needs no introduction. Most people have heard of him as an academic,consultant and management expert. However,many people may not know that C.K. stands for Coimbatore Krishnarao,since he was born in Coimbatore,or that he is a bit of an entrepreneur too he was the co-founder of Praja. Prahalad is now Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Ross School of Business,University of Michigan. He has been described as an influential management thinker and that is because of his earlier work on core competence and business strategy partly with Gary Hamel. He is also the co-author of The New Age of Innovation 2008. These books did well and were popular. However,it was the 2004 title,The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid BOP,which took his popularity to a different league and was probably responsible for his becoming a member of the UNs Blue Ribbon Commission on private sector and development.

Once BOP had been written and read the first BOP paper was co-authored with Stuart Hart in 2002,the idea seemed deceptively simple,though a priori one might have thought that its proposition was against the tenets of development economics. This is what the blurb on the present book says about BOP: Five years ago,C.K. Prahalads The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid showed companies how they could reignite profits and growth by serving the worlds five billion poorest people. Hundreds of firms have successfully taken that path building large,profitable businesses that are reducing poverty and eliminating human misery at the same time. Now,Prahalad has updated his extraordinary book to reflect the lessons of the past five years. That last sentence is slightly misleading. This volume isnt quite an update of that earlier book. Nor is it a revised edition. Instead,it is an update of the BOP idea. There are five parts in this volume. Part II alone is the original text of the BOP book. Part I is a very useful introduction and takes stock of what happened to the implementation of the BOP idea between 2004 and 2009. Part III seems somewhat pointless,since it is only about CEO reactions to the BOP idea.

Part IV provides the really interesting meat of this new volume and has case studies and CEO comments about implementing BOP. Indian readers will find Jaipur Rugs,Hindustan Unilever,Jaipur Foot,Aravind Eye Care,ICICI and ITC e-Choupal particularly interesting. Andhra Pradesh and e-governance is also thrown in. Part V is a CD attached to the volume and has video clips of the cases there are cases from other developing countries too. The CD may be an interesting interactive or pedagogic idea,but offers little value addition. Overall,this book gives an impression of not having been planned too well and the production quality is also shoddy. Nor will it have the kind of impact BOP had in 2004. But in terms of understanding what has been happening to BOP globally,it has plenty of useful information. However,it may have been better to have a revised edition of the 2004 version,rather than this experimental volume.