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RSP at BCG (talk · contribs) (Disclosure stated here and on my user page)

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Controversy about New Karolinska Sjukhuset.

Should the ongoing controversy involving inflated costs for BCG consultants for Sweden's prestige project Nya Karolinska Sjukhuset be added to this article? If so I will endeavour to try to dig up some English language news sources.

In Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden's biggest newspapers several legal experts and scholars advocate opening a criminal probe into BCG and the board of NKS actions.

https://www.dn.se/sthlm/en-pengarullning-vars-likhet-jag-aldrig-tidigare-har-skadat/

84.217.70.211 (talk) 19:20, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

BCG's New Logo

The firm has a new logo which needs to be updated on this page. Wikiedit942 (talk) 16:03, 20 November 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiedit942 (talk • contribs) 15:39, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

@Wikiedit942: How about a link to the logo? Jim1138 talk 03:41, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

BCG's New Logo

Hello! Here is a link to Boston Consulting Groups new's logo. Is this helpful? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BCG_Corporate_Logo.jpg

C fogg (talk) 20:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Update | Add new section "Awards"

Some proposed changes

Templates

Are Wikipedia editors able to update the infobox?

Adding further details about BCG's early history

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Hi there, Ross Penkala from BCG again. I know that Wikipedia articles are always "under construction," but right now the History section feels underdeveloped. The limited content (~260 words) comes across as a loose collection of claims about the firm rather than an encyclopedic accounting of its origin and growth. Nearly a third of the section is about Bill Bain, which feels disproportionate. And the sourcing seems substandard (e.g. I'm not sure why a Wine Festival listing is being cited when there are better sources out there confirming the same information, and at least one of the provided links doesn't even work).

I've been working on an updated draft version of the entire History section, but I thought I would start by putting forward an attempt to capture the firm's early history:

More information Early history draft ...

Early history draft

Bruce Henderson founded the Boston Consulting Group in 1963 as part of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company. ^[1]^[2] Henderson had been recruited from Arthur D. Little to establish the consulting arm as a department within the bank.^[3] Initially, the department only advised clients of the bank.^[4] Henderson hired his first full-time consultant, Arthur P. Contas, in December 1963.^[5]

In 1966, Henderson developed the concept of the experience curve, arguing that unit costs decline predictably with production experience.^[6]^[7] The experience curve effect was quickly adopted in corporate strategy.^[8]

In 1966, the consulting unit opened a second office in Tokyo, Japan, led by James Abegglen.^[9]^[10]

In 1968, the division had grown to 36 employees and was formally named the Boston Consulting Group.^[11]^[12] In the 1970s, Henderson arranged an employee stock ownership plan so that BCG could operate independently. The buyout of all shares was completed in 1979.^[13]

In 1967, Henderson offered Bill Bain a consulting role. Bain agreed and joined in 1967 at a starting salary of $17,000 per year (equivalent to $164,000 in 2025).^[14] He thrived at the job and soon rose to the rank of group vice president.^[15] In the early 1970s, Bain was considered internally to be Henderson's eventual successor.^[15] However, in 1973 Bain resigned from BCG to start his own strategy consulting firm, Bain & Company.^[15]

In 1968, BCG hired Sandra Ohrn Moose, the firm's first female consultant.^[16] In 1970, BCG consultant Alan Zakon created the growth-share matrix, a chart to help large corporations decide how to allocate cash among their business units.^[17]^[18] Bruce Henderson further developed the concept, and it was soon widely disseminated among senior managers and executives.^[19]

References

[1]
Baaij, Marc (December 30, 2013). An Introduction to Management Consultancy. Sage Publishing. ISBN 9781446293508. BCG was founded in 1963 by Bruce Henderson. He had worked before for Arthur D. Little, the oldest consultancy. BCG was the first consultancy to develop services to meet the demand of executive management for advice on corporate strategy.
[2]
Lars Engwall; Matthias Kipping; Behlül Üsdiken (June 10, 2016). Defining Management. Taylor & Francis. p. 181. ISBN 9781317917151. There was notably the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) founded by Bruce Henderson (1915 – 1992). [...] In 1959, he entered the booming consulting field as a vice president at Arthur D. Little but, in 1963, was hired by the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company to create "a Management Consulting Division [...] to provide general counsel to corporate management in long-range planning and strategy" (from the official announcement at BCG 28 July 2015). To appeal to clients outside the bank, the division renamed itself Boston Consulting Group in 1968 and became fully independent during the second of the 1970s.
[3]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. In 1959, he made a career change and went to work for Arthur D. Little & Co, one of the early pioneers in the business consulting field. Major clients of his included Shell Oil and United Fruit Co., but Henderson soon grew frustrated that at ADL he was unable to fully explore his ideas on how corporations should made their decisions. He shared his views with the CEO of Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Co., another ADL client, and was promptly recruited to start up a consulting department for the bank.
[4]
Hayes, Thomas C. (July 24, 1992). "Bruce Henderson, 77, Consultant And Writer on Business Strategy". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
[5]
Richard Koch (December 30, 2002). The 80/20 Manager. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 9780316243056. Yet, despite continued lean pickings, he hired consultant Arthur P. Contas—his first full-time appointment—in December 1963.
[6]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. The first of Henderson's revolutionary tools, introduced in 1966, was called the 'experience curve,' which resulted from work done for a semiconductor manufacturer. It held that unit costs go down as a company gains production experience.
[7]
"The experience curve". The Economist. September 14, 2019.
[8]
Montgomery, David Bruce; Day, George S. (January 1983). "Experience curves: Evidence, empirical issues, and applications" (PDF). Marketing Science Institute. The notion that unit costs and prices decline systematically in real terms as cumulative volume increases has been one of the most widely discussed and utilized concepts in the evolution of strategic management during the past two decades. Labeled the experience effect by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) this phenomenon has had major impact upon corporate strategy, marketing strategy, and the strategy literature.
[9]
Baaij, Marc (December 30, 2013). An Introduction to Management Consultancy. Sage Publishing. ISBN 9781446293508. In 1966 (five years ahead of the competition), the firm opened an office in Tokyo. In response to the recession of the early 1970s, BCG began to promote organizational models from Japan.
[10]
"James Abegglen, 81; management consultant wrote 9 books on Japan". Los Angeles Times. May 15, 2007. Abegglen started the Boston Consulting Group's Tokyo office[.]
[11]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. By the end of 1968, BCG employed 36 consultants[.])
[12]
Lars Engwall; Matthias Kipping; Behlül Üsdiken (June 10, 2016). Defining Management. Taylor & Francis. p. 181. ISBN 9781317917151. To appeal to clients outside the bank, the division renamed itself Boston Consulting Group in 1968, and became fully independent during the second half of the 1970s.
[13]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. [In 1975], BCG became an independent company, one of the first to take advantage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1975 that allowed the establishment of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The ESOP began the process of buying BCG from The Boston Company, the parent corporation of Boston Safe Deposit. (The buyout would be completed in 1979, five years ahead of schedule.)
[14]
Hagerty, James R. (January 17, 2018). "William Bain Jr. Founded Consulting and Private-Equity Firms, and Groomed Mitt Romney". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
[15]
Gallese, Liz Roman (September 24, 1989). "Counselor To The King". The New York Times. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
[16]
"HAA's Harvard Medal recipients announced". The Harvard Gazette. May 27, 2015. In 1968, she was the first woman hired as a business strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group, where she spent her career, becoming a senior managing partner, a director, and now a senior adviser
[17]
Michael Kaufmann (September 9, 2022). Accelerate DevOps with GitHub. Packt. p. 404. ISBN 1801813353. The matrix is very similar to the growth-share matrix from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The framework was created by Alan Zakon - later CEO of BCG - in 1970.
[18]
Richard Godfrey (September 9, 2022). Strategic Management: A Critical Introduction. Taylor & Francis. pp. 64–66. ISBN 9781317812722.
[19]
John Thackray (April 15, 1979). "Winning the Game With a Hot Theory". The New York Times.

Close

As you can see, the draft above cites a lot of academic textbooks, and the claims I included are the same ones you would expect to see in an academic-style capsule history or a newspaper profile (I also cite the New York Times and Los Angeles Times). I briefly introduce the experience curve and growth-share matrix, because those are obviously important business concepts and their widespread adoption helped establish BCG and drive growth (as documented in contemporaneous NYT reporting and academic treatments). I kept all the material about Bill Bane (with only slightly rewording) but improved the sourcing. And I added a mention about Sandra Ohrn Moose since she's notable enough to have her own Wiki entry.

Throughout the draft, I provided quotes in the citations so that it would be easy for anyone reviewing this request to confirm accuracy. If these quotes seem excessive they can probably be trimmed.

I appreciate the collaborative nature of Wikipedia content creation and would welcome any and all feedback. As always, THANK YOU! RSP at BCG (talk) 23:49, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

This is an exceptionally well-done edit request, I hope they're paying you more than they paid Right Angles. Seriously, you should offer a course on the side. Give me some time to chew on all of this and I'll see what I can do for you. MediaKyle (talk) 00:02, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Done. I found no issues with your request, and implemented it mostly as written. I did re-arrange it a bit and make some formatting adjustments. This was a big improvement. All the best, MediaKyle (talk) 00:51, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Many thanks again, MediaKyle! Truly appreciate the quick response and thorough review. Like I said above, I'm trying my hand at an updated draft of the entire History section, and I hope to have another few paragraphs ready for review soon. RSP at BCG (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Another request about expanding the History section

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Ross Penkala from BCG here again. I have another request for editors to consider. I've put together a draft that covers BCG's history from roughly 1974 to 2000. This was a period of significant growth and expansion, not just for BCG but for the business consulting field more broadly (as described in books like The Lords of Strategy). BCG opened its second U.S. office in 1974 and a Munich office a year later. Further expansion continued, and the firm grew from 277 consultants to 1,000 plus with a sizable presence across Europe, Asia, and North America.

Right now the History section contains two sentences about this period, both about time-based competition—an important concept, for sure, but not the only important development during a ~25-year stretch of growth.

I think this period deserves a more thorough treatment, not just because there's relevant information "out there" that we can include, but because these developments are all notable and contribute to an encyclopedic treatment of the topic. The second sentence of the article introduction notes that BCG "is one of the 'Big Three' [...] along with McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company." The details in the draft I've prepared explain how and why BCG achieved this status as American-based business consulting firms expanded across the globe. I don't reference every new office opening, acquisition, service announcement, et cetera—just enough to provide a high-level summary that contextualizes "growth."

More information Growth and international expansion ...

Growth and international expansion

In 1974, BCG opened its second U.S. office in Menlo Park, California.^[1]^[2] A year later, BCG opened an office in Munich.^[3] John Clarkeson led this European expansion.^[3] By the end of 1977, BCG's revenues were evenly split between business originating in the U.S. and overseas.^[4] BCG soon opened another U.S. office in Chicago and by the end of the decade the firm employed 277 consultants.^[4]

In 1980, Alan Zakon succeeded Bruce Henderson as CEO.^[5] Henderson assumed the chairmanship of the board for five years until he retired from BCG and became a management professor at Vanderbilt University.^[5]^[6] During this period the firm opened offices in Los Angeles, Düsseldorf, New York, and San Francisco.^[7] John Clarkeson became CEO in 1985,^[8] and the firm continued to expand across Europe.^[7]

In 1988, a Harvard Business Review essay by BCG consultant George Stalk Jr. introduced the concept of time-based competition that reconsidered the role of time management in providing market advantages.^[9]^[10] Stalk Jr. and another BCG consultant, Thomas Hout, further developed the idea in a 1990 book.^[11]^[12]

In 1990, BCG acquired the Australian consulting firm of Pappas, Carter, Evans & Koop and its offices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland.^[13]^[14] More acquisitions and international expansion followed,^[15] In 1993, BCG employed around 1,000 consultants.^[15] leading to new offices across Europe,^[16] Asia,^[12] and North America.^[17]

Carl Stern replaced John Clarkeson as BCG's CEO in 1998.^[18] That same year, Bolko von Oetinger [de], a senior partner at BCG’s Munich office, founded the Strategy Institute, an independent research unit.^[19]^[20]

References

[1]
Stanford Business. Stanford Business School Alumni Association. 2008. Jeremy Davis sent a nice career summary from his home in Sydney [...] The first was 10 years with the Boston Consulting Group, which included a term as managing partner of the the then-new Menlo Park office (1974–1976) and closed with term as managing partner of the Paris Office.
[2]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. BCG opened its second U.S. office in Menlo Park, California, in 1974.
[3]
Walter Kiechel (2010). The Lords of Strategy. Harvard Business Press. p. 266. ISBN 9781591397823. Finally, in 1975, Grabherr invited BCG to open an office in Munich, where Siemens had its headquarters, intimating that his company would provide enough work to justify the start-up. Henderson dispatched John Clarkeson, he of the first experience-curve studies and by now an alumnus of both the London and Milan offices, to establish the beachhead.
[4]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. Overseas business became so important to the firm that by the end of 1977 revenues were split evenly between business originating in the United States and overseas. By the end of the decade, BCG opened another U.S. office, in Chicago, and the number of consultants employed rose to 277.
[5]
"The Boston Consulting Group Elects Rich Lesser as Its Next CEO". MarketWire. May 19, 2012 – via Nexis. BCG was founded in 1963 by the late Bruce Henderson, who led the firm until 1980, when he became Chairman of the Board and was succeeded by Alan Zakon. Zakon was followed by John Clarkeson, who was CEO from 1986 to 1997 and later Chairman, and then by Carl Stern, who was CEO from 1998 to 2003 and later Chairman.
[6]
Hayes, Thomas C. (July 24, 1992). "Bruce Henderson, 77, Consultant And Writer on Business Strategy". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
[7]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. The firm added offices in Los Angeles and Dusseldorf in 1982, followed by a branch in New York in 1984. A year later, a San Francisco office opened. [...] Over the balance of the 1980s, BCG opened offices in Milan, Madrid, Stockholm, and Zurich. During this period, the company also received its first major assignment in China. By the end of the decade, BCG employed 524 consultants.
[8]
"John S. Clarkeson: 1942 - 2019". The Boston Globe. 2019.
[9]
Alan M. Webber (January 31, 1999). "Are You On Digital Time?". Fast Company.
[10]
Stalk Jr., George (July 1988). "Time-The Next Source of Competitive Advantage". Harvard Business Review. Brighton, Massachusetts. Retrieved 2022-11-01.
[11]
Des Dearlove (December 30, 2002). The Ultimate Book of Business Thinking. Wiley. p. 245. ISBN 9781841124407. The chief proponents of time-based management were two consultants with BCG, George Stalk and Thomas Hout. Their book, Competing Against Time, calls on companies to seek to compress time at every stage in every process.
[12]
Lars Engwall; Matthias Kipping; Behlül Üsdiken (June 10, 2016). Defining Management. Taylor & Francis. p. 249. ISBN 9781317917151. They benefited in particular from the interest in Japan manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, introducing what they called time-based competition in quite a number of Western firms. Somewhat unluckily, they published the corresponding book just before the burst of the Japanese bubble economy (Stalk and Hout 1990). Subsequently, BCG grew its presence in the region by opening additional offices, starting with Kuala Lumpur in 1992.
[13]
Christopher Jay (February 26, 1993). "Big firms ride out economic downturn". The Australian Financial Review – via Nexis. When the Australian consultancy of Pappas Carter Evans & Coop aligned itself with the US Boston Consulting Group on July 1, 1990, it acquired access to a large store of proprietary methodologies and developing consulting approaches as a response to the growing internationalisation of Australian companies.
[14]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. BCG grew by external means in 1990, acquiring the Australian consulting firm of Pappas, Carter, Evans & Koop in the process adding offices in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand.
[15]
Ed Dinger (December 2003). Tina Grant (ed.). International Directory of Company Histories. St. James Press. pp. 32–34. ISBN 9781558625037. A year later, BCG completed another acquisition, picking up Holt Planning Associates, and also opened new offices in Frankfurt and Hong Kong. In 1992, BCG opened an office in Kuala Lumpur, followed a year later by offices in Monterrey, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Shanghai. The acquisition of Canada Consulting Group also brought with it an operation in Toronto. BCG reached a milestone in 1993, topping the 1,000 mark in the number of consultants it employed.
[16]
"Mai-Britt Poulsen leads BCG's offices in UK and the Benelux". Consultancy.eu. December 10, 2020. The firm's office in Amsterdam was founded in 1993 through a merger with a local Dutch consultancy, while its Belgian office opened in the same year.
[17]
"BCG's new Toronto office aims to lure back workers". Consultancy.eu. November 1, 2022. BCG opened its first Canadian office in Toronto in 1993 as part of its acquisition of Canada Consulting Group. The consultancy's Canadian clients account for almost half the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
[18]
"Former Boston Consulting Group CEO John Clarkeson passes away". July 3, 2019. Carl Stern replaced Clarkeson as CEO in 1998, serving until 2003. Stern was followed by Hans-Paul Bürkner, who was CEO until 2012.
[19]
Walter Kiechel (2010). The Lords of Strategy. Harvard Business Press. pp. 267–268. ISBN 9781591397823. Bolko von Oetinger, formerly a senior partner in BCG's Munich office, longtime director of the Kronberg Conference, and founder in 1998 of the firm's Strategy Institute.
[20]
Bolko von Oetinger (November 2001). "The Renaissance Strategist". Journal of Business Strategy – via Nexis. The Institute, established in 1998, is a research unit independent of BCG's consultancy.

Close

The draft above cites some of the same sources I used for the early history passages, but I also pulled from the aforementioned Lords of Strategy book by Walter Kiechel and Defining Management (which offers a European perspective). I reworded the two sentences about time-based competition and added better sourcing. And I once again provided quotes in the citations so that anyone reviewing this request can easily confirm accuracy. (I know that when I'm conducting research, I always appreciate being able to quickly find the referenced passage.)

I tried to link to the German Wikipedia entry for Bolko von Oetinger [de], but I'm not sure I did it right. Is it supposed to look like that? Honestly, any tips about formatting would be welcome. I feel like I'm getting the hang of this but I'm sure there are things I could be doing better. RSP at BCG (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Done: Everything checks out here, and I added your text mostly as written. I tried to break up the section a bit with subheaders, but the final paragraph doesn't really fit in there -- if you want to adjust the headers, go ahead. You did the interlanguage link correctly by the way, that's what it's supposed to look like. I'll see what I can do with your other request now. MediaKyle (talk) 00:28, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

New request: Add an Operations section

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Ross Penkala from BCG here again. I have another request for editors to consider: Could a brief Operations section be added to the article? Other articles about management consulting firms have sections like this (see: McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, Deloitte, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, IMRB International, Capgemini, et cetera) that provide an encyclopedic summary of core operational details. For comparison, right now there's no content in this article describing what the Boston Consulting Group actually does (i.e., the services it provides and the sectors it operates in) and where and how it operates.

I put together a seven-sentence Operations section draft below that could follow the History section.

More information Operations section ...

Operations section

Boston Consulting Group is a management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.^[1] BCG operates from more than 100 offices in over 50 countries.^[2] Its core business is management consulting across sectors.^[3]^[4] The firm's BCG X unit provides AI, IT architecture, and software-build services.^[5]^[6] The BCG Henderson Institute is an internal think tank researching business strategy and organization.^[7]

The firm is led by CEO Christoph Schweizer, BCG’s seventh chief executive.^[8]^[9] Governance rests with more than 2,000 managing directors and partners who elect the CEO and sit on leadership bodies.^[10] As of 2026, the firm had around 33,500 employees worldwide.^[11]

References

[1]
"BCG (Boston Consulting Group)". Forbes. April 21, 2026.
[2]
"About BCG". Boston Consulting Group. Retrieved 2022-07-24. Offices in 100+ cities in over 50 countries
[3]
"Boston Consulting Group Inc". Bloomberg.
[4]
Mickle, Tripp (June 26, 2024). "The A.I. Boom Has an Unlikely Early Winner: Wonky Consultants". The New York Times.
[5]
Anjli Raval; Simon Foy (April 22, 2024). "BCG says AI consulting will supply 20% of revenues this year". Financial Times. BCG, which started investing in its AI business in 2015, has about 3,000 employees in its BCG X technology and design division.
[6]
"BCG launches 3,000-strong tech build & design unit: BCG X". Consultancy.org. December 7, 2022.
[7]
"Boston Consulting Group establishes Bruce Henderson Institute to pioneer new ideas to solving business challenges". The Economic Times. April 30, 2015.
[8]
Thomas, Patrick (May 27, 2021). "Boston Consulting Group Names Christoph Schweizer CEO". The Wall Street Journal.
[9]
"Meet BCG's new CEO: the German Christoph Schweizer". Consultancy.eu. May 27, 2021.
[10]
"Boston Consulting Group re-elects CEO Christoph Schweizer for second term". Consultancy.eu. April 2, 2025.
[11]
"BCG Reports $14.4 Billion in Revenue, Marking 22nd Consecutive Year of Growth" (Press release). BCG. April 23, 2026.

Close

IMO, it would make sense for this content to come immediately before the Projects section, which provides specific examples of BCG's work. (It would also be nice if editors could find at least a few less controversial examples to highlight, but I understand these projects have attracted substantial media attention.)

Please let me know what you think. RSP at BCG (talk) 20:31, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

Done: Looks good, I made a few changes to the references and some copyedits but nothing major. Thanks for the requests. I have a couple of suggestions for you:

The "See also" section contains two links, and their relevance is uncertain until you visit the articles. If possible, it would be ideal to somehow include these topics in the body of the article so we can get rid of the "See also" section.
The "Recent history" subheader is quite barren. What else has BCG been up to lately that received significant coverage?
More photos! You work for the company, so you can probably make something happen. WP:PICYOU is a guide meant for biographies but the same principles will apply here. If you want to see about releasing some photographs, I'll try to work them into the article.
Somewhere in the body of the article it should explain how BCG is part of the "Big Three", and how it compares to the others. This is currently only addressed in the lead, and the lead should be a summary of the body.

Let me know if you have any questions. You're doing a great job, and I appreciate your transparency, so I'm happy to keep working with you. Thank you for your patience, you'll have to forgive me for not being super excited about management consulting ;-) ... Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 12:57, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

New request about recent history

The user below has a request that an edit be made to Boston Consulting Group. That user has an actual or apparent conflict of interest.

Summary of request: Adding further details about BCG's recent history

The requested edits backlog is very high. Please be extremely patient. There are currently 642 requests waiting for review.

Please read the instructions for the parameters used by this template for accepting and declining them, and review the request below and make the edit if it is well sourced, neutral, and follows other Wikipedia guidelines and policies.

Ross from BCG here again.

I have another request for editors to consider, this time covering "recent history"—meaning everything from ~2000 to the present. Once again, I've focused on major developments that were significant enough to generate news coverage, not just press releases. Whenever possible, I've also tried to draw from the cited sources to contextualize why these developments are historically or operationally relevant—e.g, noting that Hans-Paul Bürkner was the first European to lead BCG when he was promoted to chief executive in 2003, and that the consolidation of tech divisions into BCG X in 2022 reflected the growth of IT consulting as a revenue driver. I also added in brief mentions of DICE framework and B Capital, per feedback from MediaKyle on my last request. These topics are notable enough to have their own Wikipedia entries, and it thus makes sense (to me, at least) that they should be introduced within the body of the article. I found two journal articles that discussed DICE at length. And I used staff writer-authored TechCrunch and Forbes articles to support the B Capital sentence.

More information Recent history ...

Recent history

In 2003, Hans-Paul Bürkner was elected president and chief executive of BCG.^[1] Bürkner became the first European to lead the firm, which at that time had around 2,600 consultants worldwide.^[1]

In 2005, three BCG partners, Perry Keenan, Kathleen Conlon, and Alan Jackson, published a Harvard Business Review article outlining their DICE framework, a formulation they'd first developed in the 1990s that assessed the likelihood of project success based on objective measures.^[2]^[3]^[4] The DICE framework was awarded a patent nine years later.^[2]

In 2013, Rich Lesser succeeded Bürkner as president and chief executive.^[5] During Lesser's tenure, BCG more than doubled in size to over 22,000 employees and tripled in revenue, primarily driven by its expansion into digital analytics and other new service offerings.^[6] In 2015, BCG began investing in its artificial intelligence business division.^[7] In 2017, BCG relocated its New York office to Hudson Yards.^[8]

In 2015, BCG launched the BCG Henderson Institute in honor of founder Bruce Henderson.^[9] That same year, BCG supported the launch of B Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Eduardo Saverin and Raj Ganguly.^[10]^[11]

In May 2021, the firm elected Christoph Schweizer as CEO, replacing Rich Lesser.^[12]

In September 2022, BCG reached a deal to acquire Quantis, an environmental consultancy group.^[13]^[14] Under the deal, Quantis would retain its brand and operate as a standalone business unit within BCG.^[13]^[15]

In December 2022, the firm consolidated its technology divisions into a single unit, BCG X.^[16] By 2024, BCG X had around 3,000 employees and nearly 20 percent of BCG's revenue was driven by IT consulting.^[17]

References

[1]
Melody Petersen (April 8, 2002). "Consultant Gets First European President". The New York Times.
[2]
Ivan Yusri Mahardika; Jann Hidajat Tjakraatmadja; John Welly (July 7, 2024). "Evaluating Change Management Implementation in Business Transformation of Pelita Air" (PDF). International Journal of Current Science Research and Review. 7 (7). In 1992, BCG partners Perry Keenan, Kathleen Conlon, and Alan Jackson set out to identify which criteria may be utilized to predict the success or failure of change management programs in general. As a result, they were able to determine that there are four 'hard criteria' that were highly predictive of the change management program's performance. This framework is known as the DICE framework. The DICE framework was originally published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article of The Hard Side of Change in 2005 by Perry Keenan, Kathleen Conlon and Alan Jackson. [...] In 2014, the DICE framework was granted a patent.
[3]
Anna Baraniecka (2016). "How to Measure The Social Capital In a Supply Chain" (PDF). Acta Logistica. 3 (4): 26. The DICE framework is a tool originally developed by Perry Keenan, Kathleen Conlon, and Alan Jackson (all current or former Partners at The Boston Consulting Group). A DICE score is a leading indicator of the likely success of a project based on objective measures.
[4]
Harold L. Sirkin; Perry Keenan; Alan Jackson (October 2005). "The Hard Side of Change Management". Harvard Business Review.
[5]
Chris Reidy (January 9, 2013). "Richard Lesser is now CEO of the Boston Consulting Group". The Boston Globe.
[6]
Cutter, Chip (2021-06-25). "Rich Lesser, CEO Whisperer, on His Toughest Moments". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
[7]
Anjli Raval; Simon Foy (April 22, 2024). "BCG says AI consulting will supply 20% of revenues this year". Financial Times. BCG, which started investing in its AI business in 2015, has about 3,000 employees in its BCG X technology and design division.
[8]
Sarah Jacobs (June 15, 2017). "Tour The Boston Consulting Group's stunning New York office, which has an in-house cafe and workout rooms". Business Insider.
[9]
"Boston Consulting Group establishes Bruce Henderson Institute to pioneer new ideas to solving business challenges". The Economic Times. April 30, 2015.
[10]
Connie Loizos (February 7, 2020). "Catching up with B Capital, the fast-growing firm founded by Eduardo Saverin and Raj Ganguly". Tech Crunch.
[11]
Konrad, Alex (May 19, 2019). "Life After Facebook: The Untold Story Of Billionaire Eduardo Saverin's Highly Networked Venture Firm". Forbes. Archived from the original on March 4, 2020. Retrieved November 30, 2024.
[12]
Thomas, Patrick (May 27, 2021). "Boston Consulting Group Names Christoph Schweizer CEO". The Wall Street Journal.
[13]
Benjamin Kail (September 16, 2022). "Boston Consulting Group plans to acquire sustainability consultancy Quantis". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals.
[14]
Tilly Kenyon (September 16, 2022). "BCG to acquire environmental consulting firm Quantis". Sustainability.
[15]
"BCG acquires environmental sustainability consultancy Quantis". Consultancy.org. September 19, 2022.
[16]
"BCG launches 3,000-strong tech build & design unit: BCG X". Consultancy.org. December 7, 2022.
[17]
Anjli Raval; Simon Foy (April 22, 2024). "BCG says AI consulting will supply 20% of revenues this year". Financial Times. The chief executive of BCG has said the $12bn consulting firm expects to generate a fifth of its revenues in 2024 from helping corporations integrate artificial intelligence into their businesses, a share it projects will reach 40 per cent by 2026. [...] BCG, which started investing in its AI business in 2015, has about 3,000 employees in its BCG X technology and design division.

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There were certainly more items I could have included in the draft above, but I erred on the side of brevity. Please let me know what you think. Thank you! RSP at BCG (talk) 16:05, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

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