Prasad Kaipa, PhD
Prasad is the CEO of the Kaipa Group in California and is a thought leader in the areas of innovation, leadership development and change management. He is considered to be one of the top management thinkers of Indian origin by Thinkers50 group. Prasad was inducted into the Happiness Hall of Fame in October 2014. He is the co-author of critically acclaimed and international best-seller (#2 in business books in Delhi, India in Nov. 2013) “From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom” in 2013 and just released another book “You can: Be Smarter and Wiser” (Bloomberry) with Meera Shenoy in Jan 2016. Prasad is/was on the board of directors/trustees for the International Leadership Association (ILA), Marico Innovation Foundation, Society for Organizational Learning (SoL), Intellect Design (US Board), KarmaCircles, Samskrita Bharati USA, Integral Leadership Review, YogaBharati, Lead India 2020, Aankhen, Mentor Cloud, Intertec, and Hindu University of America. He has been a visiting professor and was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) and raised multi-million dollar funding for the center. He was also a Smith Richardson Visiting Fellow at Center for Creative Leadership between 2010-11 and was an advisor to Business FAC of Fetzer Institute (2011-13). Prasad also taught in executive education programs organized by INSEAD, LBS, USC, Tuck and IIM Bangalore.
Prasad has been an advisor and coach focusing on innovation and leadership since 1990 for about 125 C- level executives in Global Fortune 500 companies. Clients included Apple, Adobe, Boeing, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Maxim, Nokia and Oracle as well as global/entrepreneurial companies like Aztec, Advanta, BAE Systems, Lunar Design, Mastek, Polaris, State Bank of India and Scintera Networks. The purpose of Prasad’s innovation/leadership coaching is to ignite the genius within individuals. Prasad’s unique competence is in helping his clients find their next significant step and take it. He found that unless he helps clients to examine their signature strengths that have turned into “core incompetence” and kept them stuck, it is difficult to ignite and channel their creativity to come up with innovative decisions, products, and services. He assists clients in becoming effective in managing people as well as oneself (personal mastery), getting reenergized and building new capacities, and taking more risks, in addition to innovative and strategic decisions.
Prasad co-founded the Entrepreneur Institute for TiE in the Silicon Valley in 2002 to assist entrepreneurs develop soft skills and connect, engage and co-create effectively with others in the ecosystem. Over 13,000 entrepreneurs have gone through TiE Institute programs. He is a part-time faculty member at the Saybrook University and works with students in the areas of creativity and innovation, transformational learning and leadership.
Prasad also worked as an educator/consultant with 100+ companies like Areva, AT&T, A.P. Moeller Maersk, Canara Bank, Exxon Mobil, Ford, Mastek, Pepsi (Quaker Oats), Navteq, Nitto-Denko, Sasken, Sun, Syngenta, and Union Bank in the areas of leadership, change management, innovation and management team development. Cisco and HP have worked with Prasad in developing innovative business models for creating a successful new business and in innovating unique, “brandable” product designs that are consistent with their culture.
As a senior manager in Apple, Prasad was asked to create an educational menu for Apple engineers using innovative learning approaches. In 1999, as a research fellow in the Apple University, and with a charter to help design ‘a learning processor that augments human intelligence,’ Prasad interviewed high achievers and exceptional people researching how they learn (and ‘unlearn’), create, communicate, relate and lead.
Prasad got his doctorate in physics, and as a professor in the University of Utah helped build an international research laboratory with Dr. Ed Haskell. Athena Interactive released three award winning CD-ROMs for leaders based on his learning interface concepts and his pyramid building (thinking in three dimensions) methodology.
In addition to ‘From Smart to Wise’, Prasad published an e-book ‘Discontinuous Learning: Igniting Genius Within by Aligning Self, Work, and Family’ and many of his writings and tools are available at http://www.kaipagroup.com. He writes a blog regularly on innovation and leadership in HBR.org and has published articles in Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and New York Times. His twitter handles are @pkaipa and @fromsmarttowise. Prasad is married to Dr. Vinoda and is father of Pravin and Vidya. He enjoys exploring and reinterpreting ancient wisdom (and its application in developing highly effective and authentic leaders), photography, listening to classical music, and playing tennis.