December 19, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
Consultants are supposed to be thought leaders. To live up to that role, they are always searching for new ways to think about organizations, to serve their clients, and to distinguish themselves from their competitors by producing fresh ideas.
The average life span of a management idea today is about three years—far shorter than 50 years ago, when it was 15 years. In fact, Management Consulting News reports that in just a month’s time the largest 25 consulting firms in the world published almost 500 books and articles.
Because the pressure to produce new thinking is so intense, there is even a subscription service for consultants—White Space—that tracks and analyzes new material and identifies gaps where consultants might best apply their resources to develop new thinking. Some consulting firms are systematic in the research and development of new ideas, and it is built into their business model.
Other consultants borrow concepts from other disciplines like science (theoretical biology, quantum physics, chaos theory) to improve organizations. Certainly consultants to nonprofits look to the business world for ideas.
Consultants also look to their clients for inspiration. As Peter Drucker, the management expert, observed, “Every consultant knows that his clients are his teachers and that he lives off their knowledge.” For instance, in the late 1800s, YMCA employees invented what we recognize today as the fundamentals of a capital campaign and went on to form the first fund-raising consulting firm, offering the YMCA approach to other organizations.
Less creative consultants decant old ideas into new bottles so they will at least appear innovative.
How important is innovation in your work? Where do your ideas come from? How important is new material to your success?
