Of all the words born within the flash and splash of the dot-com era, the most sobering for consultants may be "Amazoned," as in "don't get Amazoned." It's an expression intended to strike fear in the hearts of those CEOs who may have been ignoring the threat posed by dot-com invaders. And it's one that became the preferred verbal door-opener for opportunistic consultants eager to sell e-consulting services to Fortune 1000 clients.
Once a dosage of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) had been adroitly administered, it was time for the consultancy to wow the CEO with their existing portfolio of dot-com clients. Besides giving a consulting firm's dot-com credentials some added luster, dot-com clients allowed consultants to get into the venture capital game by offering consultancies equity in lieu of fees. Some of the more adventurous e-consulting firms scored more than 25 percent of their revenue by leveraging such risky equity transactions — a strategy that quickly sealed their fate upon the collapse of the dot-com marketplace. Meanwhile, when the dot-coms went away, so did the CEO's fear — and his or her willingness to pay for Web services.
It was a shakeout that drastically altered the meaning of the word "Amazoned," and one that has since led us to cast a skeptical eye toward consulting's fee-swapping arrangements. But in fairness, the practice of exchanging fees for equity wasn't what sealed the fates of so many failed consultancies. As we've all learned, their fates were linked to the failure of dot-coms to sustain their business models, and the vaporization of their intellectual property (IP). That is, if they actually had any to vaporize.
"The value of innovation and the ability to turn that innovation into real revenue, real profit, and real market value is much stronger on the biotech side," explains Bain & Co. partner Ashish Singh, in this issue's cover story titled "Real Science."
Singh is today counted among a growing vanguard of consultants who dwell in an area occupied by biotech start-ups and large pharmaceutical companies. It's a space that in many ways resembles the zone once occupied by dot-com start-ups and Amazon-wary CEOs, but also one where consultants compete on the merits of their own intellectual capital. By helping nurture the symbiotic relationships that exist between biotech start-ups and large pharmaceuticals, the profession stands to not only open one of its most expansive and innovative chapters, but also to repair a reputation dented by the sharp prongs of a verbal door-opener.
In the end, the companies that got "Amazoned" were consulting firms that knew more about creating FUD than they did about IP.
Jack Sweeney, Editor-in-Chief
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