61. Business Model Innovation at Innosight: A Conversation with Erika J. Meldrim

Over the course of the twentieth century, the growth of the consulting industry was fueled by a series of sustaining innovations that strongly influenced the practice of management and corporate strategy. As a result, leading consulting firms today have well-defined value propositions and business models, offering premium, high cost services to a relatively small pool of clients, while simultaneously creating the conditions for non-consumption across vast swaths of the business landscape. Put simply, most businesses that could potentially benefit from the expertise of leading consulting firms cannot afford their services, nor do these services and the underlying collaboration model necessarily align with the processes or priorities of the client’s organization. The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated these disparities, begging the question of whether new consulting models may be on the horizon. 

This week on The Disruptive Voice, we’re delighted to bring you a conversation with Erika J. Meldrim, Head of Business Development at Innosight, a strategy and innovation consulting firm founded by Clayton Christensen and Mark Johnson that focuses on helping organizations to design and create the future, rather than be disrupted by it. Hosted by Katie Zandbergen, they discuss how Innosight, looking inward and drawing on a strategy of dual transformation, is working on the development of a new initiative called Innosight Connect. This flexible engagement model is offered to clients across industries, enables an actionable understanding of Innosight’s intellectual property, embeds capabilities by teaching and upskilling teams, and emphasizes collaborative problem solving and co-creation.  This model also allows a wider breadth of organizations to take advantage of Innosight’s service offerings – different customers with different Jobs To Be Done than those served by the core Innosight offering. The conversation touches on a range of topics, including the discovery process that led to the genesis of Innosight Connect, features of the business model that differentiate it from other aspects of the Innosight portfolio, consulting industry trends, customer Jobs To Be Done, and Future-back thinking, to cite just a few examples.  Tune in for an interesting conversation focused on a great example of business model innovation theory in action!