When I co-founded my consulting business, BMI US, in 2015 with my good friend Maaike Doyer, we knew we were competing in the backyard of the Big Four + Three (i.e., Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG plus McKinsey, BCG, and Bain). After all, we were offering innovation and strategy consulting services to (mostly) Fortune 500 companies and larger. 

We also knew we had an ace up our sleeve. Every time a prospective client had also engaged with McKinsey, Deloitte, Bain, PwC, and even IDEO – which, by the way, was every time – we knew that the recommendations and strategies that these bigger, older firms delivered were, by and large, barely operationalizable. In other words, companies were paying these consulting firms millions of dollars for a bunch of research and a 120-slide deck of recommendations that had very little connection to the culture or ethos of the client company.

Our go-to line was this: “We will help you do innovation and strategy from within, employing your own resources, industry knowledge, and culture. We can even start with that big book that [insert big consulting firm name here] left on your shelf. You know, the one that’s collecting dust?”

And…though we did quite well in the US, our trajectory was tiny compared to the ever-growing behemoths (i.e., the Big Four + Three). With more people, money, influence, and a giant client list, we were often waitlisted on bigger projects.

Today, things are a-changing and the tides are shifting. Not with a bang, but a quiet, powerful undercurrent: The future of consulting is boutique. 

As AI began to eat the world a few years ago, you could feel the cracks forming in the big consulting world. It started with PwC, which laid off 2% of its U.S. workforce in 2024 and 2025. It was said this was due to “low attrition” at the firm. Okay, so it’s a big firm. Makes sense.

But when McKinsey announced it was letting go of over 5,000 consultants – the largest layoff in the firm’s history – it became pretty clear: the traditional consulting model was under pressure. The pyramid built by the Big Four, once a sacred symbol of scalability, was starting to crumble.

Why? Because clients no longer want (or need) 10 junior analysts and a partner with a $1,200/hour rate. They don’t want (or need) glad-handing and citations of historic trends to make decisions about what to do (or build) next.

Clients want results. Fast. Specialized. Executable results. And…this is EXACTLY what boutique consulting firms and agencies deliver.

In the following article/post/paragraphs, I detail the shifts (i.e., the Design Shifts) that I am seeing and hearing about, first hand, in the consulting/agency world. In every case, I have attempted to use a REAL example of a REAL boutique consulting outfit that is changing the game for the better…and everyone.

TL/DR

• From Generalists to Sharpshooters: Focus on developing deep expertise in a specific niche to stand out and deliver exceptional value.

• Nimble, Networked, and Built Like Startups: Build a flexible, agile team and leverage a strong network to quickly adapt and scale for any project.

• HI + AI: A New Delivery Model: Combine your unique human skills with AI tools to amplify your impact and efficiency.

• The Culture Shift: From Utilization to Autonomy: Prioritize autonomy, mastery, and meaningful work over rigid metrics and traditional hierarchies.

• Clients Want Execution, Not Reports: Deliver tangible results and actionable solutions, not just recommendations or slide decks.

• A New Playbook for a New Era: Embrace new business models, pricing strategies, and ways of working that reward outcomes and collaboration.

• Final Thought: Boutique Is No Longer a Niche: Recognize that small, specialized firms are now the blueprint for success, so act boldly and lead the way.

Read on for much, much more!!!

— Justin Lokitz

Design Deep Design

From Generalists to Sharpshooters

Boutique consultancies and agencies (which we’ll just call boutiques here) used to be the quiet operators; ex-partners and domain experts who didn’t need a big brand to open doors. But today, they’re becoming the standard…and not because they’re run by ex-partners.

Today’s boutiques are built around deep specialization, rather than broad generalization. Take Whipsaw, for example. Whipsaw, which started as an industrial design agency, is now an award-winning design and engineering firm known for innovative, market-defining products and experiences. The amazing folks at Whipsaw focus deeply on physical products and experiences (and the futures of these), designing everything from the Owala, a best-selling water bottle, to a visual language for quantum computers for IonQ…all with a team of less than 30 people. 

Boutiques, like Whipsaw, are not trying to be everything to everyone. They’re going a couple of inches wide and miles deep, and their clients are eating it up. Whipsaw and firms like it are doubling down on depth while the big consultancies are treading water.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. A recent review from Consulting Quest showed that over 80% of clients now prefer hyper-specialized teams over generalist firms for strategic work. Not because boutiques are cheaper (though they often are), but because they’re better.

They don’t start and end with a million-dollar deck. They start with domain fluency and smart, talented people who roll up their sleeves and co-create impact in weeks, not quarters…or years.

Nimble, Networked, and Built Like Startups

Picture this: Comedia, a twelve-person boutique consultancy, won (and executed on) a huge project that connects Zoom and Google Docs, two giants in the enterprise space. In the past, selling this project to a company like Zoom would have been an easy layup for Deloitte. But Deloitte didn’t land this one.

So, how did Comedia do this? Not with a bench of 200 IT consultants. They did so by employing smart, talented people and a robust network. Chris Basey and the folks at Comedia were confident that they could design and prototype the experience, while bringing in technical talent, where required, to make it enterprise-ready. 

Today’s boutique, like Comedia, is structured more like a startup or a modern film crew. The core team brings strategy and senior client relationships. Then they build a scalable delivery team using a network of trusted specialists, independent contractors, and partner agencies. They spin up pods of their own employees plus freelancers in mere days…and they’re 100x more agile than a big firm, carrying 10,000x less overhead. Best of all, they all benefit and grow together (including the client). 

Agility is their superpower. They’re not stuck negotiating who owns the slide deck. They’re building products that the client uses the next day.

HI + AI: A New Delivery Model

It’s also not just about hard work and expansive networks. Nor is the game just about human expertise.

With the rise of AI, every single person and firm has deep intelligence and skills at their fingertips. In this way, the new game is all about HI + AI: human intelligence amplified by artificial intelligence. Boutiques use AI agents to do deep research in minutes, generate workflows, clean up code, write drafts of reports, and even prep client communications. 

A recent example of this was told to me by another good friend, Nick Cawthon, who owns/runs Gauge, “a consultancy of designers, engineers, ethnographers and data scientists”. One of Gauge’s long-time clients, a well-known social networking app/company, hired Nick and his team to design some UX and UI. Though Gauge reported directly to the product team, Nick interfaced mostly with the design team.

In the past, Nick would have done what most designers (at least used) do, which is to design and test everything in Figma and hand the final Figma specs over to the design team, which would, in turn, hand those specs to the product engineering team. In essence, throwing them over the wall.

But this time, with AI at their fingertips, Nick and the team went several steps further, employing a part-time front-end engineer with an AI coding agent to turn those designs into working front-end code. Not a Figma spec. But a working UX and UI.

In Nick’s words, “We’re trying to get as close as possible to a deliverable… developers are whose time we’re trying to save.” 

With help from AI, Nick overdelivered for the same project price and less time than had he and his team had simply relied on static Figma designs and prototypes.

In this way, AI is NOT a novelty or a one-off. Nick has embedded AI into Gauge’s operating model in the same way that armies of expensive associates are built into a big firm’s business model. 

Broadening this from Gauge’s use case, this means that…

• Every consultant has a personal AI stack…a co-pilot for writing, researching, designing, and coding.

• Strategy decks are half-automated…insights synthesized by LLMs, reviewed by humans, delivered in a fraction of the time.
  Analysis hours shrink by 3–4 hours per day per person…a 3-person team suddenly operates like a 6-person team.

It’s not about replacing consultants or designers. It’s about amplifying their velocity, essentially creating speed, agility, and flexibility to add to the depth. What’s more, it’s about affording every single boutique the ability to overdeliver value to their clients! This is what I love the most about AI as part of the value proposition.

This is also why AI consulting is one of the fastest-growing segments of the industry, expected to hit $58 billion globally by 2034. The Big Four are pouring billions into catching up (KPMG alone committed $2 billion to Microsoft-powered AI delivery), but their size slows them down. Boutiques can implement in days what takes the giants months to approve.

The Culture Shift: From Utilization to Autonomy

So…what about the actual people, the consultants working for the boutiques?

For decades, consulting meant long hours, grueling travel, and high-stakes politics. Knowing a few people who have worked as associates for the large firms, I can say wholeheartedly that, although they were not happy, they stayed for the possibility of promotions. 

But with layoffs and shrinking margins, the promise of partnership is fading. And…younger consultants – especially those let go in the recent Big Four cuts – are certainly asking: what else is there? 

Boutiques offer an entirely new model:

• No bench. No bloat. No “face time” metrics.

• Remote-first, async-friendly teams.

• Autonomy over deliverables, not just decks.

• Profit-sharing, not partner-only bonuses.

• A focus on learning and mastery, not utilization rates.

• Work on varied projects across industries

Velocity Ave is a great example of this culture shift. Founded by Maya Elise Joseph-Goteiner after she was laid off by Google, Velocity Ave employs deep customer research that helps teams at companies like Google and PayPal create, validate, and improve products that people actually want. And…Maya and team have built designed Velocity Ave for culture as much as for business.

Velocity Ave, like the other boutiques above, is attracting talent that wants to do meaningful work with fewer layers of bureaucracy. And with AI tools helping with some of the low-level tasks once assigned to junior consultants, boutiques don’t need the old pyramid structure.

They need curious, adaptable generalists who can learn fast and plug into new tools. That keeps teams sharp and keeps the work engaging.

Clients Want Execution, Not Reports

After selling and working on hundreds of projects across industries, one thing I can say for sure is this: no one, not one person, wants to pay for or read a 120-page slide deck.

What they do want is help operationalizing strategy. They want the plan and the solution. They want someone who can sit side-by-side with internal teams, integrate into their tools, and deliver measurable results, not just recommendations.

This is where boutiques thrive. They don’t just build PowerPoints, they co-create solutions to problems. They help to find hidden opportunities and then prototype ways to address those opportunities that same week. They don’t just write vision statements; they roll up their sleeves and help teams deliver.

A great example of this is Kreatives, which focuses on strategy, design, and storytelling for impact. Kreatives counts the International Paralympic Committee and Allianz, the giant insurance company, as happy clients. They do all of this work with a team of 8 people and 1 dog (Kenzo, the Chief Play Officer).

When Kreatives was approached by the Paralympic Committee to help grow the fanbase, the Kreatives team overdelivered and “created an animated series to explain each of the 22 sports featured in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games program for broadcast, socials, and in-venue presentation”. 

This wasn’t about process, innovation theater, or a slide deck explaining what could be. Franzi, Tony, and the Kreatives team focused completely on needle-moving impact via execution. And they nailed it. 

More and more, boutiques, like Kreatives, are tying their fees to that impact, revenue lift, churn reduction, and time-to-market improvements. In fact, Forrester reports that 45% of consulting buyers now prefer outcome-based pricing, especially in areas like AI and digital transformation.

Boutiques are saying: We’ll get you the result, and we’ll put skin in the game.

A New Playbook for a New Era

So what does it take to win in this boutique-first world? This is what has been working for many of the most successful firms:

1. Own a niche. Whether it’s AI governance for fintech or sustainability design for CPG, dominate your corner of the market with authority, speed, and depth.

2. Build a flexible, on-demand network. Think modular. Tap freelancers and partner agencies to scale up and down without adding fixed costs.

3. Integrate AI agents across delivery. Use AI to automate the 60% of your workflow that doesn’t require human creativity or judgment.

4. Design culture as a retention strategy. Offer autonomy, learning, flexibility, and profit-sharing. Big logos won’t compete with that for much longer. Dogs help (just ask Kenzo).

5. Partner like you’re part of the team. Make the client’s success your KPI. Forget the overhead-heavy partner model; this is about deep collaboration and overdelivering value. Every. Single. Time.

6. Sell impact, not hours. Price around outcomes. Clients don’t care how many hours you worked; they care that the problem’s solved.

Final Thought: Boutique Is No Longer a Niche

The consulting giants won’t vanish. They’ll still win massive transformation deals, advise governments, and drive scale implementations. After all, as the saying goes, “no one has ever been fired for hiring McKinsey.” But they’re no longer the default.

In a hyper-specialized, creative, AI-powered, execution-hungry world, the small, focused, and fast firms are taking market share quietly…and rapidly.

Boutiques are built for this era. They understand the tools. They move fast, stay lean, and deliver results.

So if you’re still thinking of boutiques as “nice alternatives” to the big firms? You’re already behind. Because in the decade ahead, boutique isn’t the exception.

It’s the blueprint.

Subscribe to Design Shift for more conversations that help creative professionals grow into strategic leaders.