Consulting, Innovations, digital and more.
The natural change of consulting in innovations and digital it’s a bit of a black box, sometimes the evolution starts from the little guy. A small boutique consultancy starts doing something new, and it gets some traction, make some waves. The big guys laugh at them until they start showing results, and then one of them gets head hunted and initiate the transformation in a “Big One”, and the new way of thinking becomes a trend or a rule.
That’s in my experience, I’m sure there is more than one way that changes start, but I still remember when the word innovations and creativity was a bit of hippie, silicon valley thing. Now everyone does digital innovation, become speakers and the whole shebang.
But who are this new consultant doing digital innovations? Did they read between the lines and became an early adopter and now leading the new wave of transformation?….. Nah!
Most of them are legacy with the name digital innovations to fulfil today “new business requirements”, they still connect you with a big software solution and its products. 25+ years ago was MS Office, through an “IT consultant”, today’s “Innovation Consultant”, with cloud and its benefits, In the future, it may be a “Creative Engineering Consultant” with machine learning fully automated and deployed.
While they serve a super important role in the waterfalling of leading technologies, they are almost always ten years behind innovations.
Don’t get me wrong what Innovation Consultants are doing, in the strict definition of the word, is innovations. But maybe they are more part of the implementation rather than creation.
Today’s innovation consultant has a set of tools and frameworks, to understand the business problem, find a suitable solution (as mentioned before) and implemented for a buck or two. I have done it (I’m 34), every now and then I’m asked to do it again. However, every time I have done it for a quick buck it makes me feel dirty. I don’t feel dirty because of the work, work is great, but because the selling point is innovations, and I did nothing to help them innovate, just improve processes and system.
So how can you help them innovate?
Is a hard road ahead, a consultant can innovate for a company, but it needs to influence the culture, and create innovations that will lead others to do the same. In Australia, I heard of a guy, so I decided to go and meet with him. Built by curiosity and power by accounting, his name is Peter Williams Chief Edge Officer @Deloitte’s Australia, and he founded Deloitte’s Digital, today’s second-biggest digital agency in the world and core foundation of Deloitte’s Innovations.
If you visit Deloitte’s Innovation page, you will be greeted by:
“Where left brain meets right. Get ready to strengthen your brand and grow your business. From digital evolution to revolution, from strategy to delivery.”.
Well, inside the world of a big consultancy, Digital and Innovation stream beans a light of change, and boy oh boy have they cash on it.
How to explain the picture above….mmm… how about:
Deloitte’s is a big muscle boxer in a division where there are only 4 title contenders and a full bag of “other” contenders. He can get into virtually any fight he wants in his division and a few others. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses (wins a lot more than he loses). However, there is a new fight style that is taking the world by a storm MMA, the boxer can fight there and probably win some, but he is too big, too slow. In that case, he will introduce them to a younger dynamic upcoming brother that can do every major MMA discipline, the little brother name is Deloitte’s Digital, and he can do it all (image above), or at least it claim to do.
Deloitte’s Digital (Lil Bro) employs 4k+ staff, and revenues USD $700m+ vs. 244k+ Deloitte’s (Big bro) employees, and USD $36B+ in revenue, that’s quite a family of fighters.
Companies like Google, Uber, Airbnb were conceived out of curiosity and ingenuity, and their cultures represent that. Deloitte was not conceived by curiosity and ingenuity, but Deloitte’s Digital dances with those two, and is contagious, spreading fast not only to Deloitte’s but its competitors as well.
So how, as a consultant, achieve that effect. The core of it is, innovate, develop a new way to do things that make your framework obsolete, don’t be afraid to have to re-learn everything and challenge it, even if you build it, for the larger wider benefit of not only your clients but the world as large.
Oz
Disclaimer.
- If you are looking for an answer its 42 proof here
- I know I have bad grammar so if you find errors please let me know @ elpresi@neuli.net it will really help me improve my mediocre writing skills
- These are only opinions and ideas put together in my spare time. I am open to criticism, feedback and anything else. Just don’t take it personally and above all DONT PANIC (reference to the Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy)
