Technical Symposium 2019: From hype to reality

The 2019 Technical Symposium run by the Centre for Management Consulting Excellence focused on the process by which new management consulting services are developed.

Our research shows that simply repackaging the “same old same old” is not enough. The rapidly changing business environment means that consultants need to upgrade their services and develop new ones if they are to survive. The process of identifying and developing new products is commonplace in manufacturing, but of a different order in consulting, where the product is intangible.

In the 2019 Technical Symposium we examined the process of product and service development, learning from a variety of industries with the intention of identifying useful practices for the future. We were delighted to welcome as our guest speaker Shailendra Vyakarnam, Director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield University who has recently published “The Scale-up Manual: Handbook for Innovators, Entrepreneurs, Teams and Firms”. Shai built on his research to both inform and provoke thinking about the future of consultancy.

He was joined by Anthony Shingleton, EMEA Executive Regional Manager at Simpler Consulting, an IBM company, James Woudhuysen, Visiting Professor of Innovation and Forecasting at London South Bank University and Dr James Wilk, Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and Research Director of Interchange Research.

You can find Dr Simon Davey's account of the Symposium below.