Outlook Journal, February 2005
In consulting, the ability to innovate bestows considerable competitive advantage: Success comes down to translating innovation into business solutions.
Where does this kind of breakout thinking come from? How does a consulting firm become a recognized thought leader?
One way, of course, is through an ongoing commitment to rigorous research. At Accenture, this is often the realm of the Accenture Institute for High Performance, which works on specific projects with our operating groups and industries. At the company level, our most ambitious research project to date has been our High Performance Business initiative. Now well into its second year, this program continues to identify, analyze and measure the attributes that characterize the world’s best companies, and to draw on the lessons learned to help clients become high performers themselves.
But there’s more to innovation than surveys, data gathering and number crunching, critical though those activities are to developing new ideas. A true thought leader also spends many hours in the field, not only observing but also participating in crafting and implementing innovative business solutions.
In any given month, Accenture professionals in nearly 50 countries around the world can be working on as many as 14,000 client engagements. This wealth of client experience makes innovation a continuously self-renewing process: Working closely with clients helps us to understand their needs and the complexities of the marketplace. This, in turn, leads to new business solutions; implementation of these solutions leads to refinement—and, ultimately, to further innovation as solutions are adapted for different clients in different industries. The process is further enriched by the pooling of insights derived from both our work experience and our research projects.
That’s why case studies are an important part of Outlook’s editorial mix. These brief histories of individual client engagements (we regularly showcase one or two in each issue) not only document Accenture’s innovation at work in the market; they also validate much of the new thinking contained in our feature articles.
In this issue, for example, readers will find Accenture’s innovative value-oriented approach to mergers compellingly illustrated by our M&A work for various clients. Similarly, several case histories of the implementation of the Accenture Human Capital Development Framework bolster our thinking on how to create an engaged, productive workforce.
No company can lay claim to true thought leadership without bridging the gap between hypothesis and actionable reality. Our case studies show how it can be done.
David Cudaback
Editor-in-Chief
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