Seeing What’s Next in the Management Consulting Industry - A qualitative study of how the management consulting industry might become disrupted

Abstract

The world we live in is in constant change, transforming the business landscape across industries. The rapid economic and social development is affecting all sources of activity, turning industrial change into one of the 21st century’s biggest challenges for businesses. There are multiple sources of industrial change, where the one of disruption is a process that challenges historically successful incumbents. The phenomenon of disruption has shaken many industries throughout time, but not yet the one of management consulting. This thesis strives to investigate if there are any opportunities for conducting disruptive innovations in the management consulting industry and if any actors have begun to capitalize on those opportunities. The purpose of this research is to contribute with theoretical and practical knowledge to the field of disruption in the management consulting industry. The purpose is met by answering the research question of How might the management consulting industry become disrupted? through a qualitative case study based on twelve interviews with employees at various management consulting firms. The empirics are structured as an assessment of the current situation in the management consulting industry around the themes of customers, business model, competition and innovation. It is concluded that customers’ decreasing willingness to pay for further sustaining innovations is allowing low-end disruptive innovations to target the growing overshot customer segment in the management consulting industry. In addition, new data-democratizing technologies possess the ability to create a new way of accessing information and knowledge, which potentially could lead to a new-market disruption of the management consulting industry.