Past: Consulting firms often thrived as information brokers. They accumulated data, benchmarks, and best practices that clients couldn’t easily access themselves. Value came from asymmetry: consultants “knew things” clients didn’t.

Present: Information is abundant and commoditized. Clients often already have the data or can acquire it quickly. The differentiator is no longer what you know, but how you connect it - across domains, functions, and contexts.

Our Proposition: Consulting must position itself as the integrator of meaning, creating patterns, insights, and narratives from dispersed data streams.

Past: Firms built deep practices in verticals (finance, operations, HR, strategy) and were valued for domain expertise.

Present: Problems are cross-domain. AI isn’t just a tech issue, ESG isn’t just compliance, and workforce issues aren’t just HR. The value is in connecting expertise across silos.

Our Proposition: Consulting firms must elevate interdisciplinary problem-solving and demonstrate how they turn fragmented knowledge into systems-level solutions.

Past: Deliverables (reports, frameworks, benchmarks) were the tangible outputs that justified fees.

Present: Clients already have “deliverables” in-house. They need consultants to facilitate sense-making: co-creation workshops, scenario planning, and adaptive strategies that evolve as meaning emerges.

Our Proposition: Consulting shifts toward ongoing interpretive engagement rather than one-off static deliverables.

Past: Analysis was about breaking down problems into parts and optimizing.

Present: Context matters more than analysis alone. The same data can mean radically different things depending on culture, governance, technology, and timing.

Our Proposition: Consulting’s edge lies in contextual intelligence. The ability to situate data in a client’s unique ecosystem and make connections that lead to actionable, customized meaning.

Past: Clients paid for access (to benchmarks, industry data, networks).

Present: Clients want foresight: the ability to anticipate change by connecting weak signals and interpreting their systemic interactions.

Our Proposition: Consultants provide anticipatory guidance, leveraging their ability to see patterns across industries and geographies.

Past: Consultants were external authorities who told clients “what to do” based on superior information.

Present: Clients often have comparable access to information and even internal capability. They don’t need authority; they need a partner to help them make sense of complexity together.

Our Proposition: Consulting must position itself as a co-creative partner in meaning-making, and not just an advisor delivering answers.