The Role of the Internal Consultant

Description

Internal consultants are typically looked down upon because they are no effectively used. The most common application is under utilization followed by a disbandment. However, the original idea behind the internal consultant is has merit. Internal consultants know the system reducing the lead up time and there is a greater ability to control the situation in regards to security. However, there seems to be a small but growing trend of hybrid internal consultants that may be more effective in the long run.

Such hybrids can take the form of three different internal consultants. The first is called a centre of excellence. While technically an internal consultant this centre would essentially attempt to solve issues before they arise by using scenario thinking and seeking out potential missteps in the future. The second hybrid would focus on innovation by incentivizing employees to spend 10-20% of their time on thinking of new ways to improve the company. The final hybrid is technically an external consultant, but a external consultant that only has about 3-7 lifetime clients.

A rise in any of these hybrid internal consultants will have a profound impact on the necessity of traditional external consultants.

Enablers

Proprietary information and intellectual property rights - If information moves towards becoming more secure the need for internal consultants will rise in order to have a stronger focus on internal security

Desire for more long-term committed relationships with consultants - The current client-consultant model is already based heavily on relationships, but if there a move towards longer term relationships, internal consultants and life long consultants will push out the need for temporary traditional consultants.

Move towards specialized client-consultant relationship - For complex scenarios and pre-existing relationship is crucial to solve issues quickly and completely. As the world becomes more complex, the client-consultant model may become closed to external firms without a highly specialized relationship

Success of inside-out innovation - As a growing amount of companies find great success from internal innovation programmes, more companies will try to innovate and address issues internally before access the knowledge of outside consultants.

Inhibtors

Openness of Information - If information moves towards open-source and a collaborative model arises, many of the advantages of internal consultants, such as security, will become moot.

The growing trend and acceptance of outsourcing - If security issues no longer remain in the forefront of firms' minds and outsourcing becomes wildly used, the push towards inside out innovation will not grow.

Rising intellectual power of emerging markets - If the brain power of emerging markets continue on its exponential growth, many firms will lose innovation potential by remaining inside the firm

Availability of human capital from emerging market - As human capital becomes cheaper and more easily accessible in emerging markets, the incentives to stay inside my no longer outweigh the potential savings of tapping into the emerging markets

Lack of outside the box thinking - A major danger of not using external forces for innovation and problem solving is that ideas can run into the trap of being predictable and lacking outside thinking.

Paradigms

If internal consultants become the norm because of security and IP rights, and a desire for more specialized long-term relationships, the need for external consultants and short-term assignments will be few and far between. External consultants will still be valid for certain necessities, such as validation or capacity issues, but external consultants as a "hired-gun" for short-term projects will no longer be desired as a first option.

Timing

1950 - 3M introduces first known internal innovation programme with a "15% rule" creating innovating products such as masking tape and Post-it notes
2005 - Google brings internal innovation programmes into the spotlight by generating approximately 50% of revenue through the programme and releasing products such as gmail

Experts

Marissa Mayer - Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. Essentially the public face of Google.

Web Resources

http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/thoughts-on-googles-20-time/ - A look at internal innovation programmes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYKFWqVVzg - Interesting speech by Marissa Mayer about Google's innovation
http://enrd.ec.europa.eu/app_templates/filedownload.cfm?id=B7288CC2-AAAF-2E2A-742A-040F3A77A56B Pros and cons of internal and external consultants