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167 points godelmachine | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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ned_at_codomain ◴[] No.41888768[source]
Used to be at BCG. I think it's worth bearing in mind that relatively little consulting revenue -- even at the top strategy shops -- comes from pure strategy work anymore.

You can push much, much more volume and absolute impact through by running big merger integrations, digital transformation, and other large scale change projects at big companies.

It is basically a better business to become something like a premium Accenture, a "get stuff done" kind of consultancy. You can staff an army of junior people for a very very long time on those kinds of projects.

It's just not that easy to keep people staffed on 5-6 person teams solely on 8-12 week pure strategy engagements.

These kinds of projects are also the first discretionary spending yo get cut when times get tough.

If you're going to be focused on the pure strategy work, you'll probably want to stay really really small. We've seen some of this in investment banking with firms like Allen & Co or Qatalyst. Challenge is that consulting doesn't come with scalable monetization via success fees.

It's just not great business to be a boutique consultancy, I think.

replies(3): >>41888922 #>>41890128 #>>41891339 #
1. ghaff ◴[] No.41888922[source]
It’s true in the IT analyst business too. While there are people in 1-10 person firms who earn a living, they’re mostly not getting rich and this is a long term trend line with a lot of consolidation of medium sized firms over time. To be reasonably successful you probably need a real focus and be good at selling.

Had a conversation with an ex-Gartner analyst—now at a product company—and his comment is that even at the big analyst firms, comp isn’t great at least below senior management.