Growth

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.

By Alison Huntington.

When you look at the conditions endured by French peasants in the late eighteenth century, it’s surprising the revolution didn’t happen sooner than 1789—the French elite had it coming for a long time.

It mirrors the situation consultants in France find themselves in with respect to digital, just without the angry peasants, the riots, the beheading, and general goriness. So not at all really. Except that, like the late eighteenth century, the conditions are all set for a revolution—but it just hasn’t come about yet.

There’s a lot of talk about digital in France, but to date, little action. Despite this, there’s a definite sense of urgency that something needs to be done. Clients have seen decades-old business models turned on their heads by plucky digital disruptors, and know they could be next for the guillotine (sorry).

Japanese clients are a hard bunch to win over. Consulting has never taken off in that market nearly to the extent it has in other major economies, and consultants we spoke with estimate that only about half of the businesses they’d expect to be buying consulting actually are. It’s a culture that doesn’t think much of investing in intangibles like advice, and while interest is definitely picking up, this is a market that has a long way to go if consulting is ever to become the norm.