Baba Prasad (Ph.D., The Wharton School)
President and CEO, Vivékin Group (USA & India)
Sloan Fellow, The Wharton Financial Institutions Center,
University of Pennsylvania
Visiting Professor, IIIT-Hyderabad

Baba Prasad (Prasad) is the President and CEO of Vivékin Group, a thought-leading management consultancy that fundamentally transforms the ways in which organizations envision and manage innovation strategy and leadership cultures. Through his many years of research at the Wharton School and elsewhere, Prasad has drawn on a combination of theories from psychology, operations management, information systems, and cultural anthropology to develop a groundbreaking framework for leadership based on theories of human intelligence. He has been using this framework to help companies create and sustain a dynamic culture of leadership and innovation that suffuses the organization rather than being restricted to silos. His clients range from Fortune 20 companies like IBM and Fortune 200 firms like L’Oreal to smaller organizations like Dr. Reddy’s Labs.

Prasad finished his B.Sc. from Bangalore University (St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore) with a 100% score (and first rank) in First Year Mathematics. He received his BS (Electrical Engineering) degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and his M. Tech. (with distinction) in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the University of Hyderabad. Prasad earned a second Master’s in Computer Science from Kansas State University, and worked for two years as a technology management consultant in Shearson Lehman and JP Morgan on Wall Street. He received his Ph.D. in Operations and Information Management from the Wharton School in 1997, where he continues to be a Sloan Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center.

After his Ph.D., Prasad taught in the business schools at Purdue University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Students in his MBA course at Purdue University noted him as insightful and inspiring and he was rated MBA faculty of distinction. At the University of Minnesota, he consistently received exceptionally high ratings for MBA teaching. For the Spring and Monsoon semesters of 2011, he is a visiting professor at the Center for Exact Humanities at the International Institute of Information-Technology (IIIT-H) in Hyderabad, India.

Prasad’s work has been cited in various papers and trade journals from Australia to the US. His research formed the basis for a chapter in Nicholas Carr’s book, Does IT Matter? (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). Prasad’s work has also been featured in publications like US Banker (cover page article, August 1997) and presented to prestigious audiences that have included luminaries like Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Bank of the USA. Knowledge@Wharton, the online business research journal of the Wharton School has also featured Prasad’s work.

Prasad and Dr. Leela Prasad (Duke University) co-direct a program called DukeEngage-Hyderabad every alternate summer. Along with 8-12 undergraduate students from Duke University, Prasad and Leela teach in underprivileged elementary schools in Hyderabad. From December 2010, the Prasads have been co-directing a documentary film called Moved by Gandhi.