Further comparison of the responses of IC leaders and IC laggards led us to conclude that the chances of success in IC development and marketing are greatly enhanced by four practices:


Making intellectual capital development a formal activity. The IC leader consulting firms were much more likely than the IC laggard firms to use formal research to develop the ideas they take to market. For instance, 50 percent of the leaders vs. 0 percent of the laggards said that they use studies funded by multiple clients, and 25 percent of leaders vs. 17 percent of laggards said that they use in-house-funded studies as primary IC development techniques.

In our experience, this is important especially when consultants don’t have time to research their ideas — to reach beyond their base of client work to understand the roots of some business issues and how companies (their clients and other firms) are addressing them. As marketing has become a separate function or department in consulting firms, so too must IC development. Accenture, Deloitte, Answerthink, IBM Consulting, McKinsey, and other firms have taken such a route.

Some consulting firms have even turned their IC development activities into revenue centers: Answerthink (which owns Hackett Group, an intellectual capital R&D unit that generated nearly half of Answerthink’s $163 million in revenue last year) and Index Group (which owned a number of research services in the 1980s and 1990s, including the PRISM research program with guru Michael Hammer from which the reengineering concept was born) are just two examples.

Smaller consultancies that can’t afford an IC R&D function must nonetheless make investments in research that
supplement their consultants’ work. Research based on a handful of client examples doesn’t impress clients looking for much greater evidence from consulting firms that proclaims superior approaches to strategy, designing supply chains, creating organizational charts, or managing talent.

Focusing on fewer ideas, not more. Consulting firms should not spread their IC development and marketing dollars across too many ideas. Because substantial investments must be made to research, develop, capture, and market any one idea, urging every consultant to come up with the next big concept is a recipe for mediocrity. “Letting a thousands points of light shine” is not the road to thought leadership.

Focusing IC development and marketing investments on just a few ideas — perhaps even just one a year for smaller consultancies — can resolve the resource issue that consulting firms rated the biggest obstacle to developing strong IC. Consulting firms that fund too many ideas spend far more — and generate far less in market interest — than the firms that funnel their IC development and marketing investments into just a few areas (even just one). For instance, 75 percent of the IC leaders — compared with 0 percent of those we identified as IC laggards — said that focus was not an obstacle (giving it a 1 on the scale of 1 to 5) to developing strong IC. Conversely, 42 percent of the laggards versus 0 percent of the leaders rated focus a 3 — i.e., an obstacle.