Growth

By Julie Ahadi.

Next time you are at home, snuggled up on the sofa with the lights off watching shark documentaries (just your average weekend in my house), wait for a close up of a shark gliding through the ocean. At some point, you will notice that these fearsome creatures are anything but solitary– they have constant company. Little pilot fish (measuring about 60cms) swim, cocky as you like, alongside menacing jaws, safe in the knowledge that there’ll be a constant meal on offer (in the form of small pieces of food from the shark’s teeth) and the kind of protection guarantee that most sea life could only dream of. For their part, sharks get life-long free dentistry (which is really important when you’re a shark). In biology terms, it’s what’s known as a “mutualist” relationship, where different species work together and each benefit.

By Julie Ahadi.

There is an Arabic proverb (Lebanese, in fact) that goes: “He who wants to eat honey should endure the stings”. We suspect that a fair proportion of consultants in the GCC may benefit from reminding themselves of this mantra in the days and months ahead as the impact of low oil prices play themselves out.

By Edward Haigh.

Stockholm’s much vaunted start-up scene is having little direct effect on the fortunes of Swedish consultants, but its indirect effect could yet prove significant.

Not that Sweden’s consultants need much of a leg up at the moment: The Swedish consulting market, already the Nordic region’s largest, grew by a respectable 4.9% in 2015 and shows few signs of slowing. Cross the Oresund, Svinesund or Torne river bridges (connecting Sweden respectively to Denmark, Norway and Finland) and you find a starkly different situation.

But the presence of what many are calling Europe’s Silicon Valley within their midst raises interesting questions for consultants in Stockholm because of what it says about the willingness (or not) of a new breed of digital businesses to turn to them for help.