Management Consultancy for Innovation

This book provides a new perspective on innovation in consultancy firms. Focusing on how consultancy firms can innovate in the modern era, it exposes and discusses key drivers for innovation in the industry. These are broken down into 5 dimensions - or ?Poles? - relating to forms of capital (human capital, social capital, and three types of organizational capital) that consultancy firms can use in order to innovate, both for themselves and for their clients.

Readers of this book will not only gain insight into the "innovative consultancy" from the perspective of each of these Poles. They will also discover how consultancy firms need to find the right way of connecting these Poles together in order to produce the desired innovation. Readers will learn about the dangers of misaligning the Poles, as well as implications of innovative consultancy for ethics, academic research in the field of consultancy, and for careers. In addition to the academic literature, the book draws from real-world examples, cases and practice insights from various parts of the world.

This book will be of great use to those interested in pursuing a career in the consultancy industry, whether they are undergraduate and postgraduate Business & Management students, students not necessarily studying in Business Schools, or others seeking a career move into consultancy. It will also be valuable to seasoned consultants and managers of consultancy firms seeking new ideas on how to develop innovative capabilities in an increasingly competitive industry.

Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Pole 1: Human Capital. 3. Pole 2: Social Capital. 4. Pole 3: Consultant Virtualization. 5. Pole 4: Disruption in the Consultancy Life-Cycle. 6. Pole 5: Reflective Ability in Consultancy. 7. Connecting the Poles to form the Innovative Consultancy. 8. Implications of the Innovative Consultancy. 9. Concluding Remarks. Appendix – Cases of Innovation in Management Consultancy. References. Index

Christopher Williams is Reader in Management at Durham University Business School, UK. His publications include academic research in a range of journals, over 25 teaching cases and the book Venturing in International Firms: Contexts and Cases in a High-Tech World (Routledge, 2018)