I do advisory for pre-Series A startups as a last ditch effort to save them.
I do not get the unified industry delusion about "why X company has a bad product". It is usually either one of two things: comfort or ego. Everyone knows that but do not want to say it out loud.
I have seen these happen time and time again. Companies that are cash cow, do not care to do a better job. There is no incentive to do a better job. Moreover, the recurring thing is that if I did something different, I wouldn't have been this much successful in the first place.
The rest of the smart consultants walk on eggshells. They hint at stuff but never want to bite the hand that feeds them because the clients would rather fire you than be challenged.
It is not an IBM thing; it's generic business thing to some degree. I really have to call this a delusion. Good consultants submit generic reports that just tell them what they want to hear. It is not you; it is the economy. Stupid consultants that are well-meaning tell them they should be the best on competitor intel. Do you not think some stupid person did not approach IBM to do what Oracle or AWS is doing? Of course, they did, and they were fired immediately.
The best consultants are less of a consultant and more of a therapist.
After doing only four-month projects for the entire year, this year's realization was that nobody in the industry wants to do better. Everyone is in their place because of ego or a perceived sense of success. Or because of a grand conspiracy theory. IBM has a significant number of government contracts, so they are set for life because the vast majority government IT systems are pigeonholed into IBM systems. The acquisition is to tell the shareholders that we are so successful that we can literally buy companies. We do not even care to do things. Whatever the new thing is, we will buy it at some point.