Mr. Arun Shourie                                             
Former Minister of Communications & IT, India
“Business Leader of the Year”

Arun Shourie is among India's best known commentators on current and political affairs. Born in Jalandhar, Punjab (1941), he studied at St. Stephen's College in Delhi and then obtained his doctorate in Economics from Syracuse University, USA. Among other portfolios, he held the office of the Minister of Disinvestment, Communications and Information Technology in Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's cabinet. He was acclaimed as a “Star of Asia” by Business Week in 2002, as “The Business Leader of the Year” by The Economic Times jury for his pioneering and dogged work on privatization. In a poll of Indian CEOs, he was acclaimed as “The Most-outstanding Minister” of Mr. Vajpayee’s Government in early 2004. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards, including the Magsaysay Award and one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan. He has been an economist with the World Bank, and Editor of the Indian Express. He is widely regarded as the initiator of Investigative Journalism in India. The International Press Institute, Vienna, acclaimed him as one of 50 “World Press Freedom Heroes” whose work has sustained freedom of the press in the last half-century. He has written 24 books on a variety of topics ranging from constitutional law, modern Indian history, religious fundamentalism, governance in India, to national security. His latest book, Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again?, on India’s China policy, was released in October 2008.

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Dr. Prahalad is more than an academic; he is one of the foremost business thinkers of our time.  He was elected as the most influential living management thinker by Thinkers 50,  The Times of London and Suntop Media.  He has written five seminal books on strategy.  His 1987 coauthored (with Yves Doz) book: The Multinational Mission, Free Press, set the framework for understanding global business.  He wrote, with Gary Hamel: Competing for the Future, Harvard Business School Press, 1994 which was hailed as the best business book of the year.  He coauthored (with Venkat Ramaswamy)The Future of Competition, Harvard Business School Press (2004).  Business Week described it as a book “full of disruptive ideas”.  Business week and Strategy + Business voted it as one of the best business books of the year. His 2004 book, “The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid” Wharton Business Publishing, was voted the top business book of 2004 by The Economist, Fast Company and Amazon.com editors. As the book suggests, Dr. Prahalad points out that the corporate sector can help the poor – profitably. 

He coauthored (with M.S. Krishnan) The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value through Global Networks, McGraw Hill (2008). He has won the McKinsey prize four times for the best article in Harvard Business Review. He received honorary doctorates in Economics (University of London) and Engineering (Stevens Institute of Technology), Business (Tilberg, The Netherlands and Abertay, Scotland). He was a member of the UN Blue Ribbon Commission on Private Sector and Development.

He is active and prominent as a business consultant, and his clients include some of the world’s leading companies. He sits on the boards of NCR Corporation, Pearson, plc., Hindustan Unilever Limited, TVS Capital, The World Resources Institute (WRI) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).