Part of the value is that your competitor is also using McKinsey. So when Ford brings them in and they want to know what is cutting edge, they can spy on GM and Toyota using the consultancy, with a little fig leaf being "this is what we see the industry doing" instead of "this is what Toyota is literally doing." Corporate espionage by proxy.
Corporate espionage implies theft of secrets. McKinsey isn’t handing out secrets. They’re handing out largely public info that’s a pain to compile for high level strategic stuff.
There’s literal benchmarks and industry reports that are more like products. There’s also just chatting with well connected people who know an industry. But most of the time it’s a junior hire using Google to fill out the basic rundown of what peers are doing on a problem.
asdff|2 years ago
jncfhnb|2 years ago
Corporate espionage implies theft of secrets. McKinsey isn’t handing out secrets. They’re handing out largely public info that’s a pain to compile for high level strategic stuff.
There’s literal benchmarks and industry reports that are more like products. There’s also just chatting with well connected people who know an industry. But most of the time it’s a junior hire using Google to fill out the basic rundown of what peers are doing on a problem.
But imo it’s just basic context setting.