The future of any consulting field according to the visionary thought leaders involved in them will unfold according to the following rough pattern:

- we’ll become more and more strategic

- we’ll become less and less specialized

- eventually we’ll advise boards and CEOs directly

This of course applies to consulting fields that attract a lot of visionaries: marketing, branding, PR, HR, while it seems to be less relevant in consulting areas like IT and finance (not accusing of course consultants in these fields with lack of vision).

The future of consulting according to visionary clients:

It should become more and more specialized: I need the right guy for the right job/problem; we have tons of vision around here.

If this is really a trend, it means that specialists will work with visionary clients and visionary consultants with specialist clients.

Implications:

a. since visionaries are in minority and they are integrators, this means that visionaries in industry ( non – consulting) will have greater chances to prosper

b. since most specialists are not visionaries and not integrators this means that specialist in industry (not consultants) will only prosper if they are able to trust visionary service providers

Scenarios “b.” is clearly more difficult; exponentially more difficult and crucial: in this scenarios visionary consultants help with differentiation and/or break-throughs!