Where do you think the market is going in regards to boutique firms? I've heard it mentioned but I'm not sure what counts as boutique and what that signifies for the next few years.

So if we are talking about "traditional consulting", that usually means MBB/Big Three

The value they add is their corpus of previous work to lean on and sell. And anybody at the firm can reference that. But it's always almost the junior level consultants doing the work, and a bunch of c-suites trying to manage it and sell it.

So when you work with a firm like this, you are going to get a team who has managed a similar project as yours, but it usually ends up being generic and trying to repeat past successes.

I really think that's where some of the boutique firms are being different.

Instead of just saying "here is our Lean Six Sigma team", they can say "we've got these four people who are perfect for technical implementation, and here is a project manager who has done almost exactly this before, and here is a RevOps person who has worked in your actual industry".

Maybe someone is an expert on some super obscure domain. They might not qualify for a full time consultant position at a big 3 firm, can suddenly be pulled in on projects that are their specialty.

Mostly these boutique firms can put together a more highly specialized and focused team than the prebuilt teams at a place like Bain or McKinsey.