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Making the Most of Your Firm's Publications: A Portfolio Approach to Intellectual Capital Development

By Susan Buddenbaum, Bernie Thiel and Bob Buday

What if a venture capital firm funded entrepreneurs on a first-come, first-served basis with no questions asked? People with ideas from wacky to wonderful would get into business—more of them wacky, no doubt, given the high failure rate for new businesses. Of course, the VC wouldn't last very long. Without screening new-business ideas and the people behind them, it eventually would fritter away its capital after so many bad investments.

Survey Says: Strong Intellectual Capital Is The Key to Effective Professional Services Marketing

By Bob Buday, Bernie Thiel, and Susan Buddenbaum

U.S. professional services firms said having strong intellectual capital (IC) was the most important ingredient of effective marketing—more important than having a compelling brand, big marketing budget, a sound marketing strategy or capable sales force, according to a recent survey conducted by The Bloom Group (Exhibit 1). And the firms claiming to have the best IC were far more likely than those reporting inferior IC to generate substantial market awareness and leads for their services.

Why Focus is Crucial to a Professional Services Firm's Growth

By Bob Buday and Susan Buddenbaum

For professional services firm leaders who continue to search for that elusive growth formula, it’s time to ask a fundamental question: Is your firm sufficiently focused? Our experience is that many firms, large and small alike, are spread far too thinly. Investments in service delivery (R&D, methodology development, training and development, and recruiting) and marketing/ sales are made across too many service offerings and industries to build superior expertise and effective marketing programs in any one of them.

Getting Marketing and Business Development on the Same Page

By Bob Buday, Bernie Thiel, Susan Buddenbaum, and Tim Parker 


Marketing and Business DevelopmentLeaders of professional services firms can begin to increase the returns on their marketing and sales investments by asking one simple question: Are marketing and business development playing the same game, on the same team, and using the same game plan and scorecard?

For the majority of professional firms, our research and experience tells us the answer to this question is "no."

A Consultant's Comeuppance

This article—written by The Bloom Group's founding partner, Bob Buday, and published in the February 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review—is a fictional case study about a consulting firm called Flynn Fuller Consulting that is about to be banished by a longstanding client, a major bank. A new CEO of the bank orders senior managers to get rid of all consultants except those who can make a convincing case about why they should stay. The case study then explores the debate among a quickly assembled Flynn Fuller team about what should go into the one-hour presentation the CEO has requested. Several commentators, including executives who have used consultants, offer their views on how Flynn Fuller can make a strong case. For a reprint of this article, e-mail us at info@bloomgroup.com