Editor's Note; In Pursuit of Wealth Creation

It's a stinging indictment, and one Harvard Business School professor Gary Hamel makes without any apology.
Consulting firms, says Professor Hamel, are not very good at helping their clients find new ways of creating wealth. Instead, their "value add" is more about transforming best practices among companies within industry sectors — a strategy, Hamel suggests, that is responsible for leveling off the performances of companies while escalating the pressure on profit margins.
"In too many industries, you have companies with strategies that are too much alike," pronounces Hamel, who believes that consultancies have become too focused on the rewards of wealth conservation and not enough so on wealth creation.
Can it be that the consulting profession has somehow failed to grasp what is driving Silicon Valley's massive creation of wealth? Are consultancies to remain merely depositories for ideas rather than idea originators?
These are important questions — and ones we hope this issue of Consulting will help answer. This month, we invited some of the leading firms to tip their hands and share with us how they are working to better harness entrepreneurial notions. While many of the firms' efforts remain in their infancy, there is little doubt they are destined to impact how companies hire and reward their best people.
The efforts of consultancies to harness entrepreneurial thinking are being driven by far more than an appetite for talent, however. The ability to create wealth is expected to offer consultants a multibillion-dollar opportunity — one in which firms are engaged by clients eager to make innovation a primary component of their business processes. As Professor Hamel explains in an exclusive Consulting interview: "[Consultants] are going to have to restructure and reinvent business processes, so they don't strangle innovation."
The push to deliver wealth creation services carries enormous challenges for the consulting profession, and in this issue we profile seven consultants who we believe possess the energy and combined vision to meet whatever lies ahead. In our feature, entitled "Seven Leaders on the Front Line," we shine the spotlight on seven consultants who are now on the front line of the profession's ever-changing competitive landscape. Regardless of whether they ultimately succeed or fail at their assigned tasks, together they exude a contagious optimism that can only serve to invigorate your own career-making agenda.
And if your appetite for career guidance is yet to be satisfied, you'll want to read our feature called "Deconstructing a Great Presentation," wherein Consulting associate editor Mina Landriscina asks some of the profession's top presenters to divulge the secrets behind their special skills and successes.
Finally, we take a look at how five e-savvy companies are relying on consultants to help mine their Internet revenue opportunities. Clearly, the Internet economy is one of the richest veins running through this New Age of wealth creation, but,
it is important to note, it is not the only one. We look forward to writing about
all of your efforts to unearth riches inside the mother lode of entrepreneurial thought and wisdom.