Crowd Collaborative Consulting Services (CCCS)

Vision and value proposition

To create a push-pull based consulting community, leveraging on the diverse power of the consulting crowd to create, capture, and share values through the effective utilization of people, processes, and technologies.

The set-up will allow collaboration between consultants, academics, and others to create and capture values by exploiting/exploring the academic-practitioner value chain. It will serve as a bridge between the challenges in the real-world and the solutions from the academic ecosystems by attracting players to innovate in a conducive platform for shared values.

The problem

High-potential individual consultants unable to compete with big players in the consulting ecosystems due to lack of resources, connections, and platform. The individual consultants could be classified into the following categories:

• People Seeking work-life balance.
• Those transitioning from the corporate world.
• Individuals with great ideas to transform into new businesses.

Target market and opportunity

The target market will be focused on industry and societal challenges. Hence will be targeting the private and public organizations.

Opportunities include:

• According to IBISworld, in 2019, the global management consulting industry had $260 Billion revenue, a profit of $30 Billion with a projected annual growth rate of 1.5%. The global consulting market is projected to reach $344 Billion by 2025 (Figure 1).                                                   
• North America and Europe are the predominant locations for consulting services, and there are opportunities to reach underserved locations in other parts of the world (Figure 2).                                                                                                                               
• The democratization of consulting services, as succinctly captured in Figure 3, includes cheap analytical tools/know-how, improved connectivity, tested processes, and untapped human resources.                                                                             
• Opportunity for the private, public partnership to solve common local, national, and global challenges.

The solution

The solution to the identified challenge is to leverage the power of the crowd by creating a platform that pulls resources together to create and capture values through the proactive creation of products and joint implementation of consulting works. Figure 4 captures a conceptual framework of the solution.

The principle of Crowd Collaborative Consulting Services (CCCS) is based on the quotations below:

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do much.” – Helen Keller

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people.“ -Projectmanager.com

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” – Ken Blanchard

The advantages of the model include:

• Collaboration instead of competition.
• Replicability.
• Leverage network effects to drive ROI.
• Allows work flexibility.
• The consulting business pie is big and could be made bigger by having a diverse team.
• Proactive products/services instead of being reactive.

Examples of Proactive Consulting Products/Services Ideas

While the model allows the response to consulting products/services demands (pull), it is also going to focus on the proactive creation of products/services (push). Some of the initial proactive ideas are at different maturity stages:

Idea #1 – Farming machinery/farmhands as an affordable service.

Supply – OEMs, Leasing Companies, and Farmers with spare capacities.

Demand – Farmers in need of affordable services.

Channel – Digital platform

Market: U.S.A and later move to emerging economies

Value capture – % of service charged

Ownership – Partnership to include major OEMs and a digital platform provider.

Idea #2 – Waste recycling value chain, capturing global demand and supply data then turn them to usable information.

Value proposition – Encourage the sustainable use of resources. Create a database for recyclable materials, available recycling technologies, and users. Act as a coordination platform for all stakeholders from waste generation, waste storage, to waste reuse.

Idea #3 – Public domain information facts checking platform.

Value proposition – Reduce misinformation and disinformation. Improve information transparency. Help businesses and individuals to manage their reputation.

Team

The partnership is open to people interested in joining. The potential target groups will be current/past HBAPers and Innovation360 Licensed Practitioners https://licensed.innovation360.com/community/featured-lps/

Competition

The global management consulting business is dominated by the three big players, Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deloitte. The bulk of the market share is held by multiple smaller players (Figure 5).                                                                                         

The competitive landscape is diverse, and market share is big and could be tapped further by having a diverse team that leverages people, processes, and technologies.