The Changing World of International Business Consulting Some Target Projects & Assignments for 2000 & Beyond
Over the last decade we have pushed out considerably further in a direction that was always part of our working philosophy -- that is flexible partnerships with smaller specialized groups and individuals with world level competences and who share both our interests and work methods. Technology has greatly helped us do this, but there are some pretty powerful economic arguments for it as well. And socio-cultural changes and emerging new enterprise structures and preferences as well. The year 2000 is not 1970, or 1980, or even 1990. Most of the stuff we learned and did back then about how to organize and carry out a business has had the ground moved out from under it.
Thus we have adapted, in order to prosper as well as just survive, and have become a far more virtual organization than we ever were in the past -- which of course is not only quite fashionable but, more to the point, one of those things that is ever so easy to say... and ever so hard to get right. If you take a bit of time with this site, however, you will at the very least see how we have set up to work in this new and we think most powerful mode.
The international consulting business has changed a great deal since EcoPlan first set up shop as an economists and planners collaborative in Rome back in 1967 . It was in many ways, we can now see, a clear cut harbinger of what was to come in the business world and is increasingly standard practice today. For instance, virtually all of our work from the very first revolved around cooperative projects - highly focused time-sensitive activities involving a high sense of urgency with in most cases a sufficiently well defined frame so as to permit pretty quick evaluation of the success (or not) of our undertaking. Projects that almost always involved close team work between consultant and client, and a willingness to communicate consistently and clearly what was going on, what might be going wrong, and what it might be wise to fix before going any further. We were also early practitioners of what is now called outsourcing, both to hold down overhead costs and maintain maximum flexibility for future assignments that were doubtless going to call for new mixes of skills and availabilities.
In the first years virtually all of our clients were industrial groups that wished to increase their international presence. We worked with American firms that were interested in Europe, and (though not many at first) European firms that wanted to set up shop in North America. What we delivered to them in a first instance was primarily information and contacts about what was happening on the other side of the ocean, with more strategic counsel to follow only once these first basic information hurdles were passed. It is possibly worthwhile reminding the reader that thirty years ago information of the sort needed to scrutinize and decide about an international business opportunity was not so easy to come by. There were no virtually public databases of the sort so readily available today, there was much greater secrecy in terms of company information, there was very little standardization of statistical and other practices (rendering comparison and interpretation really quite a challenge), and language and distance were real barriers. Since we were active on both sides of the Atlantic, since we worked already in those days with both public and private sector groups, because we had the beginnings of our networks and a certain amount of technical and language competence, and because our clients thought that they could trust us, we were able to get off to a strong start.
As we rolled into the seventies, subtle changes began to take place in our assignments, to the point where gradually it was the contacts and ability to deal with more strategic issues that took over from the initial information focus. Of course there were also major changes in the international business situation, as new attitudes and awarenesses emerged. The salad years of the sixties were replaced by new concerns, themselves shaped by the first international energy crisis, new environmental and resource preoccupations, the Club of Rome, and a new morosity and defensiveness which simply did not exist before. By the middle of that decade we were thus firmly involved in the interpretation of and planning around all that needed basic information - but now this was increasingly coming from other sources, including not least from our industrial and financial clients and their in -house information services (and those of their associates, allies, and competition).
In addition to responding to our client's requests, we also became early players in the multi-client or group study scene, starting as early as 1969 with our first international multi-client survey, New Technology and Transportation, 1970-1990 (which ultimately had more than eighty purchasers, still the record in terms of numbers of subscribers to this day). More than sixty major group surveys and cooperative projects of this sort followed, at an average of about two a year, ranging in size enormously. These self-commissioned studies were and are important to us in several respects. First, they permitted us to keep our overhead resources 100% occupied, something that is important in a business where there are inevitable peak and troughs, especially when you are a smaller player (and paying Paris prices). Hardly less important, they serve as a means for us to build up our own base of information, expertise and contacts in sectors and areas which we felt were going to be important in the future. Thus we were able to probe early a number of areas which did indeed take on greatly increased importance in the future.
Not surprisingly, by the time the decade of the seventies reached its end, the group had almost entirely shifted over to strategic planning and to ever closer team work with our client group. As a result, we tended to be involved in fewer projects at any one time, but carried these out with much more interaction with the client's team. This is still the case today.
An additional twist on this has been our 'in-house adversarial work' with both public and private sector clients, whereby we provide independent critiques of plans, projects and procedures, as an informed and confidential cross-check for the client. These projects can be organized in many ways and handled either through tele-links (videoconferencing, exchanges of printed materials, etc.), or by developing small expert workshops which may bring a group of independent experts together for several days while we listen to what the client has to propose, critique, propose alternatives, telecommunication. Not surprisingly, the usefulness of such sessions are greatly improved when team members are provided with full background prior to the actual physical meeting.
Over this period, we also entirely changed our staffing and work pattern as well. When EcoPlan was first founded, it was intended to serve as a collaborative forum for a small number of cooperating professionals, each with their own small staffs. This pattern altered in the late sixties (with out more to Paris and collaboration with Eurofinance, 1969-1972) and then on until the mid-seventies during which time we built up permanent staff in the usual consulting/research pattern. In 1972, with the creation of the Chemicals Research Group with Albert Hahn and his team a new pattern was begun, which has continued to this day. At EcoPlan, until quite recently our staff consisted of a small group of young university graduates working to support specific projects, but increasingly this support work began to be 'outsourced' in various ways. Today, EcoPlan works as a network which relies heavily on outsourcing and a team of skilled teleworkers who are long time associates of the group. Which in a nutshell brings us up to the present.
As consultants we are not normally in a position to tell our clients what it is they need to spend good money for us to do for them. In our professional capacity we are here after all to respond as best we can to their problems and questions in our areas of expertise when they ask us to do so. (And of course while there are quite a number of things that we can do reasonably well within our established spheres of competence, there is also a great deal that we are not equipped to do to the high standards which are called for, or where other consultants may have comparative advantages. Indeed, as we discuss eventual assignments with our clients, one of the first things we are on the lookout for is the possibility that there may be someone else able to do the job that needs to be done better and possibly for less money than we would charge. And in that case we need to make our earliest recommendation.)
That said, on this short virtual page we have decided to take the risk and list briefly several kinds of projects and areas of activity in which we would particularly like to work with private sector groups in the months and years ahead. These summary titles will hopefully make sense to those who already have a direct interest in these areas. The reasons for our particular interest in these areas are many: they stem in part from the fact that we have been working quite extensively in them in the last several years, that we have strong public sector contacts in them (and this is potentially quite important in most of these), and/or that we feel that these are going to be important directions for industry and service providers in the future. (This list does not include the special areas of interest specific to our Chemical Research Group which are treated in a separate section of this site.)
If you see anything on this list that strikes your attention and that you might wish to discuss with us, please do get in touch. Even if you think we may not be the right group for your specific assignment but are looking for a sounding board for your ideas, get in touch anyway. We find that we can learn a lot simply by talking to those who are deeply concerned about these change issues which interest us as well.
The Changing World of International Business ConsultingSome Targeted Projects & Assignments for 2000 & BeyondHow to make money in the Information Society and the New Media
Transportation, Logistics and the "Cities Business"
The transport sector is so ripe for change that it aches. Given the fact that most of the established players are more or less paralyzed by their unwillingness to move away from the old formulae, the odds are that the real winners are going to be outnumbered by the losers. There are some enormous opportunities in all this, and we hope to be part of some of the teams that chose to confront them.
Rethinking and reinventing your international business
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Updated 3 July 1999