[rittersport3]

I used to be an associate for a major management consulting firm and your assessment seems only "directionally correct", as we would put it. Certainly there are little incentives for risk-taking - engagements run a couple of millions for two months of a team of 3-4 people; who wants to "destroy value" risking making one of the top executives unhappy? Nonetheless, there is a lot of work that is actually pretty useful (and profitable for the clients), specially on the least fuzzy projects (eg. "How can we improve our pricing?").

I'm not sure it is a matter of fairness or not, but there seems to be a real "pain" that management consulting solves. In the most prestigious firms, it's quite a better business than most. Low-competition, high-margins. We used to call it a "revenue business": revenues are so much larger than expenses that what the firm tries to optimize is the former, not the latter.

Also, does anyone knows a startup that is run like a firm? I find it a really interesting model. I would love to know if anyone knows of one that does.

[spindritf]

The political obstacles are very real. Getting over them or overcoming inertia is valuable. Just not in the sense of directly making clients money.