At last, the consulting industry is in the headlines. It is finally coming to public attention just how much money is being thrown at big consultancies, and – especially in the case of Covid-19 contracts – with little to show for it.
‘The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies’ (Allen Lane, £25, ISBN 9780241573082) argues exactly that. The authors are Dr Mariana Mazzucato, professor in the economics of innovation and public value at the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose, and Rosie Collington, a PhD candidate at that institute.
They recount how, through the 1980s and 1990s, the consulting industry crept in from the sidelines and began to render governments and businesses reliant upon its services. Organisations stopped investing in their own capacity and capabilities, with big consultancies filling the ever-growing hollows of expertise.
One might think that, as long...