CK Prahalad to speak live in Joburg

Prahalad's focus is the 'bottom of the pyramid' as the foundation for future business success. The poorest people in the world, numbering four billion, could be worth up to US$13.75 trillion annually when corporations understand how to tap their potential.

This market, he says, could be co-created by multinationals, NGOs and the poor themselves, whom he believes will become the middle classes of tomorrow.

Prahalad claims that poor nations are incubating new business models and innovative uses of technology that will begin to transform entire global industries within the next decade, whether they are in the financial sector or telecom services, through to healthcare and engineering.

This change will be accelerated by globalisation, outsourcing, the Internet and the spread of cheap wireless telecom. In contrast, few Western corporations are truly using these tools to their full extent, which will put them in danger of being swamped by a new breed of cross-border companies currently operating outside their radar.

With Gary Hamel, Prahalad sparked a management revolution in 1994 with the publication of their book Competing for the Future which says that companies must identify and focus on their core competencies. A decade later he co-wrote The Future of Competition, and his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid has been hailed as one of the most important business books in recent years.

Go to www.globalleadersevents.com/prahalad for more information.