1. MBA to Independent Consultant
How to provide trustworthy & relevant
guidance & support
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Design Thinking Action Lab – Prototype & Test

2. STAKEHOLDER
A woman in her late 20s is finishing grad school (MBA) while working part time. She is
self-aware, personable (very skilled at networking) and an active learner. She has a
talent for creative marketing and storytelling. She wants to work as an independent
consultant after graduating, but feels uncertain about pursuing this path and perceives
many challenges with doing so.
NEED
She needs a way to get trustworthy guidance and support that will help her (a) assess
the viability and attractiveness of working as an independent consultant; (b) find, win
and deliver projects successfully; and (c) perform administrative tasks that are
essential for her business.
INSIGHT
Despite her obvious talents, she has found it difficult to find steady, meaningful, good-
paying project work. She wants to focus on doing creative/strategic work (her
strengths) and avoid getting bogged down with administrative or low-value tasks. She
lacks experience in many of these areas. As an independent, she feels like she’s on her
own and has found it challenging to find resources and/or mentors who can help.
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3. INSIGHTS
• Many more people are working as independent consultants –
including some people just starting their career
• This path has many challenges
– How to find & win project work
– How to deliver the work
– How to get paid by clients
– How to get (and pay for) administrative support
– How to price services
– How to write proposals and contracts
– How to get mentorship and coaching that’s relevant to her consulting
projects
• Schools provide very little guidance or tools for pursuing this path
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4. Ideas to Prototype
Most Practical
“The Consultant Portal”
Online portal with resources for independent consultants and
their employers (best practices, training content, sample
contracts, statements of work, invoices, etc.)
Most Disruptive
“eHarmony for Consultants”
“Auto assigner” … machine intelligence solution where
consultants are automatically assigned to projects that are
ideally suited to their skills, experience and interests… and
perfectly matched with the needs of the client / employer
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5. “The Consultant Portal”
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Resources for Consultants & Employers
Home For Consultants For Employers
Sample Content
Social / Interact
How to Find Projects
How to Market Your Services
How to Write Proposals
How to Deliver Projects
Getting Help
Best Practices
Sample Content
Social / Interact
How to Find Consultants
How to Write Project Postings
How to Determine Rates
Compliance with Laws & Regs
How to Manage Consultants
Best Practices

6. “The Consultant Portal”
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How to Find Projects
How to Market Your Services
How to Write Proposals
How to Deliver Projects
Getting Help
Best Practices
Resources for Consultants & Employers
How to Market Your Services
Consultative Selling
Networking
How to Get Referral Business
How to Uncover Needs
How to Price Services
How to Create a Website
How to Create a Blog
Blogging Best Practices
Newsletters
Seminars
Public Speaking
Understanding Objectives
Defining the Project
Defining the Approach
Structuring the Proposal
Project Management Basics In-Progress Reviews
How to Find a Mentor
How to Do Administrative Tasks
Bookkeeping Basics
Should You Incorporate?
Finding Support Resources
Additional Resources

7. “The Consultant Portal”
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Proposal Templates
Sample Statements of Work
In-Progress Review Template
Invoice Template
Client Satisfaction Surveys
Sample Content
Resources for Consultants & Employers
Allow Comments
Post Questions / Answers
Integrate with Social
Networks
Social / Interact

8. Test: Interview 1-A
USER COMMENTS
• “This would be useful. This is a site I could use.”
• “Finding projects is my biggest priority”
• “How can I get my foot in the door at X and Y
*large companies+?”
• “It’s a challenge to get your name out there.”
• “I never have time to blog or do the marketing I
should be doing”
• “It’s hard to know how much to charge… It
seems like I always have to defend my rates. So
help in this area would be great.”
• “Sample proposals would be helpful”
• “What about project plans?”
• “How do I find and use mentors. I really feel like
I’m on my own… How would the site help with
that?”
• “Is there a way to help people find mentors?”
• “Why are you trying to cater to both consultants
and employers? Where’s the synergy?”
• “What if you allowed job postings” (to attract
both consultants and employers)
INSIGHTS / LEARNINGS
• For this user, the sample content & templates
would be helpful (nice to have)
• The real value is from providing ways to find
new project work and to find mentors.
• Finding mentors is a priority, but this user
seemed skeptical that this portal would address
that need very well.
• This user provided a number of useful
suggestions…
– Including sample proposals and sample project
plans would be helpful.
– Trying to cater to both consultants and employers
may be unnecessary or even distracting
– Either focus on consultants only, or find a way to
create value from the participation of employers
(e.g., having project postings)
• In general, this user had a positive reaction to
the “Consultant Portal” prototype.
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9. Test: Interview 1-B
USER COMMENTS
• “The high level concept sounds good.”
• “How do I know if independent consulting is
right for me? Some guidance in that area
would help me.”
• “How about info on how to define service
offerings?”
• “There are a lot of different types of
consultants
(management, marketing, technical, …) What
type of consultant will you cater to?”
• “Will the site content apply to all types of
consultants”
• “Where are you going to get all the
content?”
• “Will you allow users to share their own
content/templates?”
• “How do I figure out if I’m qualified”
• “How do I get training”
• “What’s an ‘in-progress review’?”
INSIGHTS / LEARNINGS
• This user had a positive reaction to the
prototype, but seemed skeptical that it
would be helpful to her specifically
• She was unsure about being an independent
consultant so info in this area would help
• She pointed out the many different types of
consultants and questioned whether the site
would be able to cater to all these different
types
• She offered the idea of allowing users to
submit content samples to help address this
• Some specific suggestions for content to
include:
– How to determine if independent consulting
is the right choice
– A “qualifications” checklist might be helpful
– How to define service offerings
– Different sections for different types of
consultants might be helpful
– A glossary would be helpful; not all the terms
are widely known
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10. Objectives
Must-haves
Nice-to-haves
Location
Budget
Etc.
Skills
Experience
Interests
Location
Rates
Etc.
“eHarmony for Consultants”
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Matching Consultants & Projects
Independent
Consultants
Companies
with Projects
“Auto-Assigner”
Project Matches
Project Leads Candidates

11. Test: Interview 2-A
USER COMMENTS
• “This would be great! It’s exactly what I
need”
• “No more cold calling!”
• “What type of information would I need to
enter?”
• “How would it work?”
• “Sounds too good to be true”
• “Maybe you should call it ‘Match.com for
Consultants’ rather than ‘eHarmony’” (since
it’s for temporary work)
• “If you could actually figure out how to do
this it would be really valuable.”
• “Wouldn’t you need to collect a lot of info on
culture, personality, etc.?”
• “Seems like it would be really hard.”
• “Where would you get the data to do the
machine learning?”
• “It’s a little scary to think that a machine
could determine our career path. But
then, people are finding their life partners
this way, so why not, maybe it’s not that
crazy?”
INSIGHTS / LEARNINGS
• If such a system could be built, it could
actually be really useful
• The users initial enthusiasm started to wane
as she thought about the challenges and
likely limitations in implementing it
• We would (presumably) need to get access
to a bunch of data to create a machine
learning algorithm to do this matching
• A “proof of concept” or some sort of pilot
that demonstrated the efficacy of such a
matching system would need to be
developed
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12. Next Steps
• Both ideas seem to have merit
• For the first prototype ("Consultant Portal"), the next step
would be a more refined prototype that incorporated the
users' feedback
• For the second prototype (“eHarmony for Consultants”), the
key issue is whether this is even possible, so the next step
would be to test/assess the feasibility of developing such a
system
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