Tuesday 10th Oct, 2017
Zoë Stumpf.
As an analyst (rather than an on-the-ground consultant), it can be easy to dismiss a consulting market when it seems so troubled that there appear to be few prospects of things going right. Brazil is one such market. The volume of consulting work barely grew at all in 2016, having contracted in 2015. The economic situation is dire—the economy has shrunk by more than 7% in the past two years—and is also beset by high unemployment and a crippling budget deficit. Well-documented political shenanigans have been hugely destabilising—with impeachment followed by meatpacking scandal followed by further impeachment worries—and have hit investor confidence hard. Bear in mind, too, that this is the country that gave us the delightful (at least to the disinterested observer) notion of the “chicken flight”—the idea of a hopeful surge in economic performance, swiftly followed by a fall to earth—and that was when times were relatively good, with Brazil proudly occupying its position as one of the then-fabled booming BRICS.
Wednesday 16th Aug, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Rome might not have been built in a day, but it was built in concrete. Indeed, it was the invention of concrete, not its civic values or imperial ambitions, that gave the Romans their roads, aqueducts, and extraordinary structures, such as the Pantheon, that still amaze us today.
Friday 11th Aug, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
One of the biggest complaints clients make is about a lack of choice, either because most suppliers look the same or because an outside authority, usually a government or regulator, is forcing them to do something. And these two things feed off each other. When an external stakeholder is laying down the law, sometimes literally, it limits the opportunity for differentiation–the more prescribed the process, the more similar firms inevitably become.
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