Around the table, a dozen of the top CIOs in the world leaned
forward in rapt attention, eyes and ears locked on the superstar
management strategist. They knew they were hearing a story that
would have a profound impact on their thinking, their companies,
and their careers.
Because CK Prahalad was talking about stuffed animals.
How many of you, he asked, have been to a child's party at
Build-A-Bear? A couple of hands went up.
"Come come now, ladies and gentlemen, we're all friends here, and
surely there's no shame in sharing a child's joy at a party. Now
how many of us have been to an event at Build-A-Bear?" Most of the
hands at the table went up, a bit sheepishly at first and then
accompanied by broad grins to match the one on CK's face.
"And when you left, you knew three things, right? One, you knew
your child had had a great time, and that is of course the most
important point," CK said. "Two, you knew you'll be coming back to
Build-A-Bear many many times in the future because as part of the
whole experience of adopting a bear and creating a personal
identity for it, your child game them his birth date, his sibling's
birth dates, and your home address to put on his newly adopted
bear's birth certificate.
"And third, you knew you'd spent, when all was said and done, about
USD 150 or USD 250 or whatever amount for a stuffed bear. A very
nice stuffed bear, to be sure, fully credentialed and deeply loved
by your child, but nonetheless a bear whose cost was perhaps USD 2.
Yet you paid USD 150 for it."
"One of the bloody cleverest ideas I've ever seen," CK said. "They
take a USD 2 mass-produced stuffed animal and through the artful
creation of a very rich and very personal set of experiences around
that USD 2 product, they get you to pay USD 150 or USD 200 or USD
300 for it.
"So I beg you, as we take this discussion forward, do not tell me
that your company's products cannot be greatly enhanced by the
addition of IT-enabled services to create unique, personal, and
meaningful experiences. Because that is simply not the case."
The world is now a much poorer place without the wisdom,
graciousness, vision, and inspiration of CK Prahalad, regarded by
some as the world's top thinker on management and business
strategy, and a celebrated and dearly loved distinguished professor
at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. CK passed
away over the weekend at his home in San Diego after a brief
illness.
But for all of his nearly incomparable accomplishments in the
worlds of business and academia, CK might be best remembered for
his passionate and untraditional thinking about the billions of
low-income people around the world: in his native and beloved
India, in Africa, China, South America, and elsewhere.
His landmark book, "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,"
challenged businesses large and small to shift their thinking from
the traditional view that those living in poverty are too poor to
be able to afford my company's products, to the more-opportunistic
perspective of how can I rethink my packaging and pricing and
distribution to offer those people products that they can afford
and on which I can make a profit?
His "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" book is deeply moving
and evocative, as all of CK's books are, because he politely but
forcefully compels us to look at the world in ways that are
unfamiliar to us, that can make us uncomfortable, and that force us
to think rather than just drone on drearily.