Accenture has risen to the top of the White Space Thought Leadership Rankings in the GCC and other emerging markets, ahead of Strategy &. Accenture was only firm in the ranking whose score for emerging markets material was higher than its score globally.
 
The GCC consulting market grew by more than 18 per cent to $2.2bn in 2013, and this latest report demonstrates that the largest consulting firms in the world are continuing to heavily invest in developing thought leadership for the GCC market.

The White Space report ranked the top five performing firms as Accenture (1.), Strategy& (2.), The Boston Consulting Group (3.), Bain (4.) and Roland Berger (5.).

GCC piece makes top five
The report also reveals five of the best pieces of thought leadership across all emerging markets. This year, Strategy& was identified for its GCC market piece: Listening to Students’ Voices: Putting Students at the Heart of Education Reform in the GCC. Source says that given the acute issue of youth unemployment in the region, Strategy& provided a fresh perspective by surveying the oft-ignored end users of education themselves. It makes for a powerful piece of thought leadership which should be essential reading for education policy makers in the region.

Fiona Czerniawska, Joint Managing Director at Source Information Services and founder of White Space said:
“It’s not that Accenture has dramatically upped its game in the GCC since last year; it’s simply kept up the quality while nearly all other consulting firms have fallen back.

However, it’s one of only three firms not to have any obvious areas of real weakness and it is the only firm in our ranking whose score for emerging markets material is higher than its score globally. But it also publishes some material that it probably shouldn’t, so Accenture’s mission for 2015 is to find a way to be remarkable consistently. That really would put it out of the reach of most other firms right now.”

It’s not always about volume…
The report found that EY dwarfs all other firms with regard to volume of published material, producing one in three pieces of emerging market thought leadership and three times as much as runner up McKinsey. In the GCC, Deloitte produced almost a third of consulting thought leadership in 2013 (28 per cent), closely followed by Strategy& (24 per cent). However, the report found that all of the Big Four are now in the bottom half of the emerging markets ratings.

White Space includes thought leadership from about 30 of the world’s leading consulting firms, all categorised and searchable by service, sector and geography. In addition to White Space ratings reports, there are quick links to some of the best thought leadership relevant to various different services and sectors.

For more information about this report, please contact Jodi Davies, Source Middle East by email or on +971 (0)52 989 5224.