AI is the Trend: But Independent Consultants are using it for productivity and marketing purposes when they should be creating a new type of consulting firm

There's no doubt that independent consultants should adopt useful AI tools, but the adoption of new technology alone is not a complete strategy; its just a tactic or an initiative. If every adviser can generate faster and better agendas and plans, presentation drafts and workshop and research summaries and visulisations, all these capabilities become more commoditised not less. They are easier to buy or by-pass, lower to price, and harder to defend as a value add. Competing on the same tools simply accelerates the competitive contest.

The more valuable question is what becomes possible when routine production costs fall. The market making Blue Ocean for consutants using AI may in fact sit in the infrastructure around independent practice, rather than delibvery ie. private, trust-based ways for specialists and boutique firms to better coordinate their relationships, complementary expertise and collective intellectual property while remaining accountable for the decisions they help clients make.

That is a strategic hypothesis that is worth testing.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on 25 June 2026 that around 12 per cent of Australian businesses used AI in the workplace in the 2024–25 financial year. Adoption varied by size: 35 per cent of large businesses, 22 per cent of medium businesses and 11 per cent of small and micro businesses reported use.

That is a useful market signal, not proof of a settled consulting opportunity. The same ABS release found stronger adoption among innovation-active businesses, which suggests that some prospective clients may expect advisers to work fluently with AI even while their own operating models are still developing.

CSIRO’s review of the productivity evidence describes mixed results, difficulty attributing organisation-level gains and examples where AI actually increased workload rather than reduced it. The practical implication is selective application: do not add AI everywhere.

A consultant doesn't just compete with other consultants. A client can build an internal team, buy software, commission a research platform, use an outsourced virtual or AI assistant, ask an industry association, appoint an independent board or defer their decisions and probably other things I'm forgetting.

So what is the insight for small firms and independent consultants? Research shows that large consulting firms compete through infrastructure that clients don't fully understand and that smaller firms and independent consultants rarely have time and procedures for: strategic account management disciplines, coordinating cross disciplinary expertise, sharing client and industry context and internal referrals. LinkedIn can support visibility and a CRM can track contacts and live sales opportunites, but neither is designed to recreate the behind the scenes collaboration that large firms rely on to build trusted referral relationships.

There is an opportunity for small firms and independent consultants to use AI to clse that infrastructure gap as well as combine the strengths of all the consulting alternatives that clients turn to, without inheriting all of their costs and complexities. That could mean using AI to develop a small network of integrated independent consutlants, which gives clients specialist depth and clear handover between advice and implementation, as well as a dependable way to keep the right people connected to the right problem.

Consulting is divided into familiar strategic groups who compete against one another: expert advisers, facilitators, implementation specialists, coaches, agencies and large multidisciplinary firms. AI makes the boundaries between some of these groups more permeable, but it doesn't remove the need to decide who is ultimately accountable. A network of independent specialists can offer the breadth of a larger firm while keeping the depth and personal trust of a small practice. AI offers new tools for creating this new firm structure.

Also, the chain of buyers, parotcularly in complex B2B decisions, is typically far wider than the person who issues the proposal. A chief executive may sponsor the engagement, individuals in a leadership team may need to have input and be involved in selection and have varying degrees of influence, employees have to live with the consequences, and a board or risk function may need re-assurance.

A differentiated offer can create value across this chain: decision clarity for the sponsor, participation for the leadership team, usable tools for the people implementing the choice and a traceable evidence base for governance. An integrated network of independent consultants can now use AI driven internal processes to understand, diseminate and respond to the needs and input of multiple stakeholders, while protecting client confidentiality and making distribution consents explicit.

Clients rarely need a report in isolation. They need access to evidence, stakeholder conversations, decision forums, implementation rhythms, capability transfer and a way to revisit assumptions. These complementary services are often where consultants can create more value than another AI-generated document.

A integrated and collaborative network of independent consultantsv makes those complements easier to assemble: one specialist opens a relationship, another brings a relevant capability, a facilitator creates the decision environment and the group maintains a shared record of what is known, assumed and yet to be resolved.

Consulting also has functional and emotional dimensions. Clients want better analysis and faster progress, but they also need confidence to make irreversible choices, permission to challenge inherited assumptions or a safe and neutral process that allows difficult views to be heard. AI can accelerate synthesis; but advisers can reinvest that time in sharper questions, stronger evidence and clearer accountability.

A strategic trend has direction, relevance and the potential to reshape buyer value. AI meets those tests, but its effect will not be identical in every organisation or profession. A forecast that routine analysis will become cheaper is plausible but it is not a reason to assume that trust, judgement or implementation will become less important.

The opportunity is to use AI behind the scenes to surface relevant collective knowledge, identify complementary skills and prepare internal action points or client-ready material with appropriate permission and review. The tool is not the proposition. The proposition is better coordinated expertise and more confident decisions.

The National AI Centre’s guidance for early and low-risk adoption emphasises practical governance, accountability and transparency. For advisers, those principles can be part of the value proposition rather than a compliance appendix. Explain where you use AI, protect confidential information, keep a human decision owner and preserve a review trail.

The Six Paths point towards a collective industry question: how can independent consultants escape structural disadvantage rather than simply compete harder with one another within their strategic grouping of other gig consultants? The answer may be private, trust-based infrastructure that helps a collection of talented individuals collaborate across organisational boundaries while preserving each person’s independence.

The Blue Ocean Four Actions Framework and Strategy Canvas turn a hypothesis into choices. The exact curve will depend on each adviser’s comparative advantage, client obligations and risk appetite, but here's one for starters.

The aim is not to hide AI use or to make the tool the hero. It is to make a deliberate choice about where technology improves the work, where collaboration creates additional value and where a named consultant remains accountable.