Remembering CK Prahalad

Image: Kent Coston Horner / AFP for Forbes India

CK Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor

Call me at 11.30 PM India time today,” said the brief email. I was over the top with joy. For the last two months my story on the India research centres of global business schools had been stuck – it lacked the big-picture perspective, the editor said. And this one interview would solve it all.

For two long months, I had hounded CK Prahalad, the person behind University of Michigan’s India research centre, for an interview. My initial emails went unanswered. I sent polite reminders. They probably landed in his trash folder. Desperate, I tried calling. My phone calls went into voice mail. The man was simply elusive. But I persisted – and kept sending unsolicited email into Prahalad’s inbox until he finally relented. For a rookie reporter like me, this was the biggest interview of my life.

I decided to take the call from home but my cellphone didn’t have an international dialing facility. So I asked my local grocer-cum-phone booth operator to connect me at 11.30 via a conference call. Perched in my 10th floor flat, I called him at 11.30 sharp. No sooner had my grocer-cum-phone booth operator connected me than I realized that the interview was nothing short of disaster. I couldn’t hear a lot of what Prahalad was saying. I took down notes of whatever I could. For the rest, I prayed to God.

They say that Bombay is a city that never sleeps. And for some reason, people don’t think it odd to buy grocery at midnight. The ambient noise from my local kirana shop started trickling into this highly-cerebral interview making matters worse for me. “Oye, ek kilo kaanda tolna!” yelled a voice, loud and clear. I froze. Prahalad froze. The hair on my neck bristled and I turned red in the face. “I think we should end this interview now,” said Prahalad rather curtly. The ‘now’ in his sentence was a rather firm, no-nonsense, NOW. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. I pleaded and said it had taken us so long to finally find a time to talk and we ought to finish the interview despite the noise. He relented unhappily. But only for five minutes. Ever since my grocer had mentioned onions, Prahalad had switched off and simply didn’t want to talk.

I calmed myself down. This was my first – and last – brush with Prahalad, I told myself. I would avoid him from now on. Or so I thought... Two months down the line the editor walked up to me and said we needed to interview Prahalad for a special issue on marketing. I was scared of approaching him again. After that disaster of an interview, he had become the kind of guy you can’t afford to goof up in front of – and I already had for no fault of mine. But I started hounding him again. He ignored me for the next four months. The special issue came and went but Prahalad remained his usual elusive self.

Meanwhile, I changed jobs. Once again, I was asked to interview him. By now I was becoming a pro at hounding him. I knew the drill. Drop an email request. Drop a reminder in two days. Call and leave voice messages. If he is in town, figure out which hotel he is staying in and leave messages for him at the reception. If he is speaking at an event, be there and try and get to talk to him. Armed with my recorder I walked into a CII seminar where Prahalad was speaking about his now-famous innovation sandbox. As soon as he got off the stage I ran to him and told him that I wanted to interview him. He remembered my name – he had not replied to them but he had noticed all my persisting emails. “I thought your article on the Thinkers 50 ranking was first rate,” he said. “Call me at my hotel tomorrow after 8 AM.” I was shocked. He not only remembered my name, but had also read my article!

“But can’t I simply come and meet you?” I asked. It sounded rather silly to do a phone interview when we were in the same city.

“No. I have some other engagements. Phone is better,” he said curtly. So be it, I told myself. This would be the interview of my life.

Morning was another story.

“No, he still hasn’t come back. When he does, I’ll ask him to call you,” said the friendly voice on the phone sensing my exasperation. This had been my fifth call since 8 AM in the morning and it was close to 12 now. Since 8 AM I had been sitting by my phone armed with my recorder, pen and writing pad. And nothing happened. First he was in a breakfast meeting. After that, he got into a never-ending Hindustan Lever AGM – the one where Doug Baillie was inducted as CEO.

The voice on the phone jolted me back to reality, “I need to shop for my son’s wedding. Can you tell me where I can buy good saris?” Having got so many calls from me since morning, Mrs Prahalad had warmed up to me. “You could try Dadar perhaps,” I say. “Thanks. I’ll go there rightaway! And yes, I will tell him you had called,” she said excited and hung up.

Disappointed, I picked up my recorder and went to office where I dropped CK Prahalad an accusing mail saying that I had called up his hotel at the designated time – and several times after that – but he wasn’t around.

This time I was really disappointed. So my frequency of reminder emails was down to one in five days. Three weeks later Prahalad did reply saying he was sorry about what happened and he surely would look me up on his next trip to India the following month. Thrilled, I started reading his books once again.

But it would be another eight months before he finally gave the interview. And the usual emails followed – this time with a line saying that he had promised to meet. Finally he agreed to meet – one night he told me to come by at the Taj at 8.30 AM the next day, a Sunday. I panicked. Time to speed read his books again – in one night.

Sure enough, early morning the Boss and I were at the Taj. This would be my first real meeting with the man after years of hounding him. He met us graciously and we trooped into the coffee shop. He insisted that we have breakfast with him. When we finally settled down to eat, Boss and I started with our questions. “My mother always said, you must have breakfast first. Business can wait,” he told us. We obliged. So for one hour, we discussed everything from the new airport coming up in Bombay to the weather as he lazily lingered on his omelette and played with his fork. Then, we got down to real business. We discussed everything - from his new idea of global resource leverage to the bottom of the pyramid, China, taking social enterprises to the next level and urbanization. My 90-minute recording cassette (this was the pre-digital recorder era) ran out. I recorded the next half an hour of the interview on my phone till it ran out of memory. Then I took notes. We were hanging on to every word. After making me wait for years, Prahalad had finally given us a three-hour interview – with a 13,000-word transcript!

The next morning I got a call from a US number. I mumbled a sleepy hello and the voice at the other end said, “Hi Neelima. This is CK here.” I jumped out of bed. That was the last thing I had expected. All he wanted to know was if I was trying to reach him. I wasn’t. But he had inadvertently let something slip – now I had his cellphone number, something he had diligently guarded till now. From hereon, the drill changed. Email. Send reminder. Call on mobile. He would always be very polite on the phone and would also call back if need be.

After that, I met Prahalad often during his India visits and he gradually transformed from a dour-faced no-nonsense guy to a warm person. I met him again in Delhi in April 2008. His new book – The New of Innovation – was about to be released. As we settled down for an interview at the Taj Palace, I handed him my new business card – I had moved cities and changed jobs. “I notice a new surname here,” he said as he read the card. “Did you get married?” From there on, he started asking me about my husband and what he does. I tried to steer him to the interview but he said that could wait. “Tell me, what is the most exciting thing you have done lately?” he asked. And I told him about this trip to Ladakh that I went on. “Send me your pictures. I would love to see what that place looks like,” he said.

Prahalad never forgot my Ladakh trip. When I met him again 7-8 months later at an editor’s roundtable, he introduced me to KV Kamath saying, “KV, meet Neelima. She just went to Ladakh.” I didn’t know how to react to that.

I spoke to him again some months ago. He said that he had come to India but couldn’t meet me because he had to cut short his trip due to some bronchial problem he had developed. Little did I realize that this would be the last time I would talk to him, that the same bronchial ailment he talked of would finally kill him.

As the news of his death broke on Twitter, I felt a little strange. It couldn't be true. I just had to confirm this somehow. After thinking about it for a while, I finally called – for one last time – on his now-familiar cell phone number. His wife took the call and confirmed that he really is no more.

It feels a little strange to think that he is gone. That I won’t hear him speak again. That I won’t have to hound him again. I feel a little sad as I look at a copy of his last book – with a note he specially wrote for me.