The first move in innovation consulting is not the brief. It is writing down the decision the work must change and the name of the executive who owns that decision. Skip it and you do not buy advice. You buy a workshop programme: This is an activity that reports well and moves no funding line, so the consultancy keeps the only physical record of the agreement.
The rest of this page is a procedure for the buyer. It runs in the order the work is done, and every step concludes with something you can check before you move to the next one.
One distinction decides which firms are relevant at all. Guerric de Ternay's survey of the market draws the line plainly: Management consulting helps a company run what it has, and innovation consulting is the work of discovering and testing new ways to grow. If your problem is cost, process or throughput, an innovation firm is the wrong supplier and will usually say so late.
Step 1. Record the decision statement and the identity against it.
One sentence, one name, one day. For example: the portfolio committee will fund no more than two of nine candidate ventures at its September meeting, on the recommendation of the Chief Technology Officer.
Verify your progress prior to proceeding: read the sentence to somebody outside the programme and ask who can answer no. If they cannot tell you, you have a topic rather than a decision, and no consultant can be forced to a result.
Two failures follow from skipping this step. The first is scope creep into anything that looks interesting. The second risk is the consultant becoming the decision-maker by default, because nobody else was appointed in a document.
Step 2. Identify the object that is present at the conclusion but is not present currently.
A funded portfolio has documented conditions for termination. A documented innovation management system. A signed-off data-protection route for a new product. A trained internal team can run the next cycle without the consultant. A strategy model the board has used to move money.
If the answer is a slide deck, the engagement is a workshop with extra steps and should be priced as one. PA Consulting puts its exit in capability rather than documents, saying its services "aren't only about giving advice" but about co-creating solutions with the client. That is a defensible exit, because the client possesses the method.
You should verify your progress before proceeding: The object has a title that fits in the brief. Frameworks, roadmaps and insights all fail this test, because not one of them can be handed over.
Step 3. Check whether the organisation possesses the capability.
Two UK examples show how much this step changes the arithmetic.
For central government and arm's-length bodies, procurement guidance stipulates that departments contact Innovation and Consultancy Services to establish whether it has the capability and capacity to take the assignment before engaging external consultants. ICS runs on full cost recovery with daily rates published, and covers strategy and stakeholder alignment, policy and service improvement, organisational design and performance, and governance and assurance. A published rate card and a specified team are better than a competitive tender for routine work.
For a new use of personal data, the ICO's innovation advice service answers a specific question about a product, service or business model that is not yet live. It confirms within three working days that it has understood the question and aims to answer within ten to fifteen working days. The answer is informal and not legally binding.
Verify your progress before you proceed: You have either a documented capability check or a consultancy response. Neither costs a consultancy fee.
Step 4. Match the shape of the engagement to the decision, not to the firm's reputation
The market sells at least seven distinguishable things under one heading. They are not substitutes. What separates them is what they settle, what stays with you, who signs off, and how each one breaks down.
The rows below summarise published service descriptions from BCG, PA Consulting, Innovation360, the ICO, Innovation and Consultancy Services and Guerric de Ternay.
| Engagement shape | What it settles | What you hold at exit | Who signs it off | Failure mode when mispicked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy-led programme, in the shape BCG describes | Where the innovation money goes | A strategy model and a tested pipeline of ventures | The board, through portfolio funding | A model that outlives the sponsor who commissioned it |
| Co-created capability build, as PA Consulting sells it | How the organisation runs innovation once the firm leaves | Roadmaps, governance and portfolio discipline in client hands | The client's own leadership team | A team that can facilitate a session but cannot make a decision |
| Innovation management system built to ISO 56001, the Innovation360 route | What is repeatable, documented and auditable | A system, a gap-to-certification plan and an evidence file | An accredited third-party auditor | Certification read as proof of commercial performance |
| Innovation department inside a large consulting group | Which existing accounts and services the work reaches | Access to the group's wider network and staffing | The group's own staffing and quality model | A workshop function bolted onto a sales pipeline |
| Independent boutique consultancy | Speed, senior attention and a method nobody else is selling | A bespoke method and founder-level involvement | The founder or a small partner group | A sales-heavy calendar and thin sector reach |
| Regulator advice service, such as the ICO's | Whether a data-protection route is viable before launch | An informal written answer, published in anonymised form | The regulator's own published process | Informal advice treated as certification or endorsement |
| Public-sector in-house centre, such as ICS | Whether external spend is justified at all | A capability check and a published daily rate card | The department's procurement route | Market rates paid for work the centre already does |
BCG's own description shows how much shape matters. Its innovation journey is strategy-led, biased toward action and agile, and it runs through four elements: an innovation strategy built from outside and inside views, sprints that launch minimum viable products, support for the transition from experiment to scale, and enablement of the client's own capabilities. Buy that to acquire a pipeline. Buy a two-day workshop from the same brand and you buy neither.
Verify your progress before proceeding: You can call the row you are purchasing and the row you are not.
Step 5. Fix the evidence standard and the body that will judge it
Never let the firm that builds the system also claim to certify it. In the ISO 56000 family, ISO 56001 is the only certifiable standard, and it sets the requirements for a formal innovation management system. Innovation360, which has worked inside the technical committee that wrote the family, states that it does not certify organisations and that certification requires an accredited third-party body. The same separation applies on the regulatory side. The ICO states that its advice is not binding and that it cannot give public or commercial endorsement or certification.
The evidence standard belongs in the agreement, not in the closing workshop. Identify the auditor, the standard, the regulator or the internal committee that will read the result.
Verify your progress before proceeding: The brief identifies the judging body, and that body is not the supplier.
Step 6. Set the kill criterion, the review time and the exit term.
Three lines in the agreement do more work than any governance appendix.
- Kill criterion: the product, the figure and the time that finish the task. The programme comes to an end if fewer than two ventures clear the pilot threshold by 31 March.
- The time of the last review is provided: the sponsor re-reads the decision statement from Step 1 on a scheduled day and confirms it is still valid.
- Exit clause: who owns the deliverables, what information comes back, and what the client can run without the consultant.
Verify the preceding material prior to proceeding: You can state the default finish time of the project without looking it up.
Where this procedure breaks
It breaks when the decision owner changes mid-engagement, which happens more often than the method does not work. It breaks when the buyer wants the workshop, because a workshop is politically easier than a kill decision. And it breaks when the innovation function has no funding authority of its own, because then the strongest recommendation in the room still needs a second meeting to become real.
That does not argue against hiring a firm. It argues for purchasing the row in the table that matches the decision you actually have.
Sources
- Innovation and Consultancy Services (ICS), Department of Finance, Northern Ireland
- Innovation Strategy and Delivery, BCG
- Innovation strategy, PA Consulting
- ISO 56001 Consulting and Readiness, Innovation360
- Innovation advice service, ICO
- The Best Innovation Consulting Firms to Join in 2025, Guerric de Ternay
Run through this
- A written decision statement consisting of one sentence, one name, and one date.
- A named artefact for the project exit that is not a slide deck, framework, or roadmap.
- A written capability check or advice response from internal or public services.