Friday 30th May, 2014
By Fiona Czerniawska Twenty years ago Gavin Potter and I wrote a book called Business in a Virtual World. Its thesis was that the increasing conversion of ‘stuff’ into digital information paved the way for a new way of doing business. The book garnered some nice reviews, earned the praise of people we respected – and sold a couple of thousand copies. How times change: today, digitization books pepper the top of bestselling business book lists. After years of speculating what the next big thing in consulting will be, I think we’ve found it.
Friday 10th Jan, 2014
By Fiona Czerniawska Two people are a coincidence; three suggests a trend.
Monday 16th Jul, 2012
Innovation, if we’re honest about it, has never been the core competence of most consulting firms, even (some would argue, especially) of the large firms. Excelling at the dissemination and commercial application of new management ideas and techniques, consultants have rarely been their originators – and for sound economic reasons. Innovation is costly and high-risk: most clients, although they may lip-service to creative thinking, are looking for tried-and-tested methodologies that deliver nigh-on guaranteed results. What they don’t want is old ideas re-peddled or standard methodologies ap
Tuesday 3rd Jul, 2012
Star Trek has been lying to us all these years. Space isn’t the final frontier because there is, of course, no end to the frontiers we face. Passing through each frontier is a bit like breaking the sound barrier in the 1940s: once you’ve realised you go faster than the speed of sound, the next frontier becomes travelling at twice the speed of sound, and so on.
Monday 7th Mar, 2011
When Thierry Breton, Chairman and Chief Executive of Atos Origin, announced last month that he wanted his firm to be a “zero email company” he raised some interesting questions about how consultants do business.
Thursday 29th Jul, 2010
Here is how many consulting firms develop their thought leadership:
Tuesday 20th Jul, 2010
No, this isn’t a series of observations about client “dependency” on consultants.
Saturday 3rd Jul, 2010
Here’s a little-known fact: the largest 25 consulting firms in the world collectively publish, on average, 445 new pieces of thought each month. That’s just under 18 articles per firm, although in practice the distribution is skewed. Firms such as McKinsey and Booz, both of which have regular publications to feed, tend to write much more, as does Accenture.
All of which makes me wonder whether there’s a “right” amount to publish.
Tuesday 8th Dec, 2009
Recessions are supposedly great times for innovation. Companies, their backs against the economic wall, are forced to be creative; those that rise to this challenge emerge stronger once the recovery comes.
Is the same true of consulting?
It should be. Long and deep recessions like this one create the need for new ways of managing. Post-recession, buyers of consulting want different services: the recession has changed them and they want it to have changed their suppliers as well.
So why does innovation always seem to be such a challenge for consulting firms?
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