Boston Consulting Group

The Boston Consulting Group

Type Founded Headquarters Key people Industry Products Revenue Employees Website Partnership 1963 63 offices in 37 countries Hans-Paul Brkner, President & CEO Management consulting Management consulting services 2006: US$1.8 billion about 4,100 consultants www.bcg.com

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a leading management consulting firm founded by Harvard Business School alumn Bruce Henderson in 1963. He left HBS ninety days before graduation to work for Westinghouse, where he became one of the youngest vice presidents in the company's history. He would leave Westinghouse to head Arthur D. Little's management services unit before accepting the challenge from the CEO of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company to start a consulting arm for the bank. In 1965 Henderson thought that to survive, much less grow, in a competitive landscape occupied by hundreds of larger and better-known consulting firms, a distinctive identity was needed, and pioneered "Business Strategy" as a special area of expertise for BCG. As his client list grew, Henderson targeted the nation's best business schools. At some point he was said to have eclipsed McKinsey as the top recruiter at Harvard, aggressively wooing its best students with high salaries and the chance to make a difference in a cutting-edge firm. He encouraged the brilliant young minds he hired to come up with innovative ideas that were meant to dazzle hardened corporate veterans.

In 1973 Bill Bain and others left BCG to form Bain & Company, and two years later Henderson arranged an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), so that the employees could take the company independent from The Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company. The buyout of all shares was completed in 1979. In 1998 BCG created The Strategy Institute. Its purpose is to enrich the firm's strategic thinking by applying insights from a variety of academic disciplines to the strategic challenges facing both business and society. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) ranked 8th overall and first among smaller companies in Fortune Magazine's 2007 "100 Best US Companies to Work For" survey, based on strong employee development, a supportive culture, and progressive benefits.

Competitors
Today BCG competes principally with McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company. The Boston-based firm is among the largest management consulting firms worldwide. BCG has 63 offices in 37 countries, and its current CEO is Hans-Paul Brkner. Other competitors include Monitor Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Mercer Management Consulting.

Recruiting
BCG typically hires for an Associate or a Consultant position. Whilst so called "lateral hires" as Project Leader, Manager or Vice President are possible, it is not the norm. BCG recruits MBA graduates to join as Consultants from the world's top business schools, and focuses the majority of their recruiting effort to schools such as Instituto Superior Tcnico, Harvard, Penn/Wharton, Stanford, INSEAD, Yale, Darden, Tuck, Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Chicago, Berkeley Haas, Duke and Columbia. There is also an opportunity to join as a Summer Associate or Summer Consultant

(internship) position for 10 weeks, which for the majority of interns will result in an offer for full-time position. While applications vary from year to year, insiders estimate that BCG North American offices receive around 10,000 resumes every year for the Associate position. Typically, 1 to 2% of candidates are extended an offer to join the firm, ~70% of whom accept - ratios that are considered in line with competitors McKinsey & Company and Bain & Company.

BCG growth-share matrix

The growth-share matrix chart. In the 1970s, BCG created and popularized the "growth-share matrix", a simple chart to assist large corporations in deciding how to allocate cash among their business units. The corporation would categorize its business units as "Stars", "Cash Cows", "Question Marks", and "Dogs", and then allocate cash accordingly, moving money from cash cows toward "stars" and "question marks" that had higher market growth rates, and hence higher upside potential. The chart was popular for two decades and "continues to be used as a primer in the principles of portfolio management," as BCG says.