I have been writing a lot lately about cash flow, leveraging IP, and generating passive income streams. No silver bullet here, no great enterprise has ever been started without extraordinary effort.
The world is filled with sole consultants and small agencies that have taken these tools and used them to turn their cash flow trickle into a stream that allows them to work on intriguing stuff, instead of hunting for billable hours.
Yet my entire time working for medium to large consultancies was just one long frustrating exercise trying to get people to buy into these concepts.
The problem is the model. people (Big 5 managers) are hesitant to rock the oat and challenge what made them big in the first place. And thats billable hours.
So instead of generating IP that will earn money without anybody turning up, their whole focus is on generating IP that makes it easier to sell billable hours.
Nothing wrong with that, except that it leaves a lot of potential revenue out there up for grabs.
I am sure there will always b a place for the Big 5 models.
But you have to wonder what happens when SAP style architecture gives way to a collection of small, easy to integrate, flexible SaaS systems?
Or when the remnants of the strategy consulting industry is outsourced, off-shored and democratized?
Or when the last vestiges of decision making processes are just a master card and a few pushbutton clicks away?
Or... when the army of solo consultants and small agencies finally storm the gates....
When things start they are integrated and complete, as they mature they become modular, flexible and diverse. Maybe their time has come?
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