C.K. Prahalad News & Articles

All articles related to management guru C.K Prahalad.

World Economic Forum, Annual Meeting 24.01.2004

Open source means computer program source code that is open to users, explained moderator Georg von Krogh, Director, Institute of Management, University of St Gallen, Switzerland. The idea is that users know their own needs and know best how to improve the code. “The question is, how do we tap into this and could this be a way to rethink innovation in our own companies? How can we give incentive to people to contribute their intellectual property? This is a social phenomenon and economically very interesting,” von Krogh added, noting that 760,000 contributions have been registered as open source to date.

Henning Kagermann, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, SAP, Germany, stated that “open source is the result of frustration” among software engineers. But what if accountants have problems, he asked. “The engineers wouldn’t be interested in their problems and the accountants can’t program,” he quipped. Kagermann said every company developing business applications should be obliged to pay attention to its customers although “you don’t develop especially for one customer or two, but for clients as a category.” As companies cannot afford to over-engineer, they need to remain practical.

Larry Page, Co-Founder and President, Products, Google, USA, a Global Leader for Tomorrow 2002, said that he has used numerous systems and examined various open source programs. What works, he noted, are things that aren’t particularly innovative. Most programs are clones of existing ones. He said that those contributing to open source software teams are “geo-distributed” across the world, so they care and remain related through the software. Page said that the open source programs tend to be good for back-end software, especially Linux. “You can install it on just about everything including our iPAQs,” he said. He noted that programmers wishing to link to the Google Web API (access protocol programs) can add something on top of the standard Google, such as a verification system. However, many such programs lack polish or are just functional, while others may be sophisticated but not at all intuitive. Page thought it would be beneficial to have better models for open source, given that protocols (the way to use or connect to the Internet) are also open. The problem, he said is that these were developed before the Web by universities, which forgot to add two or three lines of code for authentication. “So we have all this spam,” he said. Page argued that although transparency may represent a social good, what matters is the interest it provokes among users.

Richard A. Jefferson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, CAMBIA, Australia, a Social Entrepreneur, develops policies and technologies that enable many new and low-margin applications. “It is a process for the democratization of innovation,” he said, noting that farming represents such a technology. There are parallels between open source software and all levels of the innovative process, he commented. Instead of developing and patenting thousands of processes, as giant biotech companies do, why not harness the creative talents of two billion of the earth’s people? he proposed. “They are the owners of skills like animal husbandry, bee keeping or farming,” he remarked. “The key is human creativity, and using technology and wise policy to nurture the innate problem-solving capacity within all people.” Owners have no motivation to corrupt, he added. Systems that work better are a benefit. Even poor farmers in rural India who face risk can understand that and are willing to dedicate tiny portions of their tiny lots to experiment.

C. K. Prahalad, Professor of Business Administration, University of Michigan Business School, USA, asked, “Do we really understand the cost of ownership? Interoperability? Security? And who owns the intellectual property?” This is a debate which is not about technology, but about the nature of society, he declared. “I believe all people are looking for higher levels of access – in government, hospitals or IT. We’re talking about access to all people and free.” The critical issue is not whether something is open or proprietary, but how to provide access, whether free or not, to as many people as possible. Prahalad noted that communities of common interest can be mobilized quickly, resulting in growing numbers of self-regulating groups capable of making their own rules regardless of government regulations. “People are intelligent enough to know what they are getting and not getting,” he said. There is always “value” in a society and “poor people cannot afford to buy the wrong things.” Open source is about how to build a system for the world’s people.