Market conditions

By Fiona Czerniawska

Consultants are notoriously optimistic. Years ago, I had the partner I was working for up against a wall (metaphorically speaking, you understand), when he overused the phrase, “every problem is an opportunity”. “This is just a problem,” I said, “I’ve looked everywhere for the opportunity in it, and there isn’t one.”

By Fiona Czerniawska

When does a big consulting service become a blockbuster?

The simple answer is that it’s when it ticks four boxes:

• It resonates with a widely-recognised issue in society: ‘just’ being a business concern is never enough to fuel exceptionally high levels of growth.
• It is a new issue: philosophers may tell us that there’s nothing really new under the sun, but corporate memory is short and each new generation of executives experiences something for the first time.

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.