Growth

The growth agenda: it’s on the lips of virtually every consulting firm at the moment. Private sector clients, blinking in the macro-economic daylight, want to develop new products and launch them into new markets. They want to know how to innovate, how to recruit the best people from emerging markets and how to re-engage consumers in more jaded ones. Growth-related projects often have a caché within consulting firms beyond their size because the results are more tangible than most consulting services (a new product launched, a new marketing campaign).

The art of “and” is the title of an article by the Boston Consulting Group on how organisations, post-recession, need to grow revenue while simultaneously cutting costs. It’s not a question of one or the other, the article suggests: you have to do both.