Strategy firms rated highly in consulting thought leadership league table

Research released today by Sourceforconsulting.com identifies the consulting thought leadership winners and losers – with many firms demonstrating they are not getting the best value from their thought leadership programmes in terms of ensuring clients really engage with what they publish. The league table, based on the top 25 global consulting firms by turnover, ranked the top five for thought leadership as McKinsey (1.), Booz (2.), IBM (3.), Bain & Company (4.) and Deloitte (5.).

Utilising Sourceforconsulting.com’s recently launched thought leadership resource, White Space, the research analysed around 15,000 items of thought leadership from the top 25 global firms, ranging from published articles to blogs and podcasts.

To rank the firms, Sourceforconsulting.com used its four aspects of thought leadership; which it believes consulting firms have to get right in order to attract the attention of clients and potential clients. These are:

1. Differentiation – ensuring originality and distinctiveness from that of competitors. Strategy firms Booz, McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group all excel, as does IBM.

2. Resilience – showing a depth of thinking and/or research carried out. Firms which produce shorter, insightful output find it difficult to prove the depth of research which has gone into them. IBM and McKinsey both get the balance right.

3. Appeal – is it relevant to their specific circumstances; is it topical, interesting, well written, jargon-free? Strategy firms are again strong in this area.

4. Appropriate commercialisation – how far the material will encourage clients to take action or be able to recall the consulting firm’s expertise in this area. Clearly the hardest aspect to get right, but in a generally weak field, Roland Berger and Accenture scored highest.

Fiona Czerniawska, joint managing director of Sourceforconsulting.com said: “Thought leadership is a complex and crowded area. Done well it can really strengthen a consulting firm’s brand, and done badly it can actually be quite damaging. What surprises me most is the huge variety in quality of output within a single firm, with some firms producing a high volume of material which is nearly all very poor. There is definitely an opportunity for consulting firms to introduce stronger quality control of their published material, and remember that less can sometimes be better.”

As a result of the analysis carried out, Source concludes that no one firm gets all of their thought leadership right all of the time.

The complete Thought Leadership League Table is available to subscribers of White Space, the subscriber-based web service which provides a unique resource for those interested in thought leadership produced by consulting firms.