“Their business models suck and they’re expensive for what you get.”

That was Hugh quoting someone regarding advertising agencies. I’ve been drawing several parallels lately between advertising agencies and consulting firms and also noodling on what kinds of transitions energy consulting firms are facing in this rapidly flattening world.

Here’s one thing bothering me about the business model at every consulting firm I’ve been associated with. Generally, once you get a task order in-house with a defined “budget”, there is every incentive for the project manager to limit the amount of time and number of people that contribute to delivering the product.

That’s backwards. Costs are fixed, generally. There should be every incentive to get input from as many qualified people as possible and for them to put in as much time and effort as possible to deliver the product.

That business model sucks.

Another thing. The information architecture tends to be behind the curve. Blackberries are so over. Just as cellular technology allowed the Philippines to leapfrog the US in personal communication a few years back, harnessing similar emerging technologies just may allow someone to leapfrog the established energy consultants dealing in the Philippine sector… in a way that doesn’t suck so badly.