People from far beyond Ann Arbor traveled to Blau Auditorium in the Ross School of Business early Saturday morning for a memorial service to honor former Business School professor C.K. Prahalad and celebrate the life of a man who deeply impacted both individuals in the school and the global business world.

Prahalad, internationally recognized for his research in corporate strategy and the role of top management, was a beloved and well-respected professor. He passed away in San Diego in April at age 68.

In a video tribute to the late professor, four faculty members in the Business School spoke about Prahalad’s influence on their lives. They all agreed Prahalad had a special knack for making people think differently about a variety of issues.

Ted London, an expert on the impact of market-based strategies on poverty alleviation and the director of the Base of the Pyramid Initiative at the University’s William Davidson Institute, said Prahalad brought his inquisitive nature to all of his projects.

“What I remember most about C.K. is his questions,” London said. “He could kind of reframe the way we think about things.”

The speakers who knew Prahalad as a teacher, colleague, academic collaborator and leader emphasized that Prahalad’s influence stretched far beyond theoretical ideas and discussions.

Jan Timmer, former CEO of Philips Electronics, said Prahalad helped save the company when it was in “very dire straights” and on the verge of bankruptcy.

The two met for lunch one day, Timmer recalled, and discussed the state of the company. By the end of the meal, they had formed a way to restructure and revitalize Philips.

“It was remarkable,” Timmer said. “It was only that lunch, there was no paperwork, there were no studies, there were no committees. There was nothing but a meeting of minds and a handshake.”

At a gathering of 100 Philips executives, Timmer said Prahalad conducted “psychological warfare” on a “hostile and difficult audience” with decades of experience and resistance to reform. Eventually, Prahalad convinced the executives that the company was headed for destruction if things didn’t change.

“He was like an exorcist driving out all the bad habits of these people,” Timmer said Saturday.

The ninth of 11 children, Prahalad was born in Coimbatore, India in 1941. His father was a well-known Sanskrit scholar and judge and his mother was a homemaker.

While earning his Bachelor of Science degree in physics at Loyola College in Chennai, India, one of Prahalad’s professors recommended him for an internship at a Union Carbide Corporation battery plant. At 20, Prahalad was promoted to manager — the youngest to hold such a position in Union Carbide history.

In 1964, Prahalad went on to receive a postgraduate degree in business administration at the Indian Institute of Management.

During his time at the institute, Prahalad met his future wife Gayatri, who he married five years later. They had two children — Murali and Deepa — and all three family members attended Saturday’s service and spoke in honor of their husband and father.

In 1975 Prahalad graduated from the Harvard Business School with a Doctor of Business Management. He wrote his doctoral thesis on multinational management with classmate Yves L. Doz, who attended the memorial on Saturday.

According to Business Week, Prahalad’s thesis was one of the first studies to claim corporations needed to reorganize to employ global strategies while still addressing local needs.

After graduating from Harvard, Prahalad returned to India to teach at the Indian Institute of Management.