Market conditions

Every now and then we talk to someone who, in the course of a single interview, perfectly encapsulates the opportunities and challenges of an entire market.

Segmenting the consulting market is a bit like skinning a cat: there are many ways to do it. Size is a useful way of thinking about it: small and medium-sized businesses don’t buy much consulting and, when they do, they buy it from their auditor or from freelance consultants.  Sector is much less reliable as an indicator of difference: at the moment, you can take two banks of a broadly similar profile and find that one is buying a lot of consulting services while the other is buying virtually none.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the shadow