Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is undergoing a dramatic transformation from a traditional strategy consulting firm into a technology-driven AI product organization, according to Scott Wilder, a Dallas-based partner at the firm. The shift represents a fundamental reimagining of how consulting firms operate in the generative AI era.
BCG launched an internal R&D lab approximately 15 months ago, marking a strategic pivot toward building, implementing, and maintaining AI tools rather than solely providing advisory services. “Every company has to become a tech company,” Wilder explained. “BCG is no exception.” This transformation follows the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, which catalyzed widespread enterprise adoption of generative AI.
The firm has developed a three-tiered innovation structure. At the data level, engineers leverage BCG’s proprietary data to build MCP servers and agents that automatically retrieve relevant information. The middle layer consists of consultants creating tools and agents for client projects, with successful innovations feeding back to the R&D team for firm-wide deployment. The top layer features executive-developed enterprise tools including Deckster (a slideshow editor trained on 800-900 templates), Ava (an internal IT and HR assistant), and GENE (a conversational chatbot for presentations and publicity).
BCG has created approximately 36,000 custom GPTs, positioning itself as the world’s leading creator of custom GPT applications. The firm employs “forward-deployed consultants” — inspired by Palantir’s forward-deployed engineers — who build tools directly on client projects through “vibe-coding” approaches.
The innovation process follows a rigorous pipeline. New tools undergo red team security testing, data protection office review for privacy compliance, legal assessment, and information security evaluation before integration into BCG’s central marketplace. An orchestration agent helps employees identify the best tools and data sources for their needs.
BCG’s “enablement network” comprises approximately 1,000 people across all departments who train colleagues on AI while gathering frontline insights. The firm reports that 80% of custom GPTs originate from frontline consultants rather than central teams, emphasizing a bottom-up innovation culture. With dedicated product teams and a “UX Center of Excellence” conducting user research, BCG now operates like a traditional product organization, complete with crowdsourcing pipelines and continuous feedback loops.
Key Quotes
Every company has to become a tech company. BCG is no exception.
Scott Wilder, a Dallas-based BCG partner with a computer science background, articulated the firm’s strategic rationale for its dramatic transformation into an AI product organization, emphasizing that even traditional professional services firms must develop deep technical capabilities.
We’re in a phase where we’re really starting to leverage our internal proprietary data.
Wilder explained BCG’s data-level innovation strategy, highlighting how the firm is building MCP servers and agents on top of proprietary data sources to enable AI tools to automatically retrieve relevant information — a shift he sees as the future of AI development.
A lot of it has to happen at the rock face, on the case teams, versus centrally.
Wilder described BCG’s bottom-up innovation philosophy, where forward-deployed consultants build tools directly on client projects, with successful innovations then scaled firm-wide through the R&D team — a model that has generated 80% of the firm’s custom GPTs.
In short, we’re doing all the things you’d expect a product organization to do.
Wilder summarized BCG’s complete organizational transformation, noting that with dedicated product teams, UX research capabilities, and crowdsourcing pipelines, the consulting firm now operates with the same structures and processes as traditional technology product companies.
Our Take
BCG’s transformation represents a critical inflection point for professional services firms facing existential questions about their role in an AI-driven economy. The firm’s success in creating 36,000 custom GPTs demonstrates that scale is achievable when innovation is decentralized and frontline employees are empowered to build solutions. However, this approach also raises questions about quality control, technical debt, and whether consultants can truly replace specialized software engineers. The “forward-deployed consultant” model is particularly intriguing, blending domain expertise with technical implementation in ways that could redefine consulting careers. Most significantly, BCG’s pivot suggests that competitive advantage increasingly lies not in strategic insights alone, but in the ability to rapidly build, deploy, and iterate on AI tools that operationalize those insights. This shift will likely accelerate consolidation in consulting, favoring firms with deep technical capabilities while challenging traditional strategy-focused competitors.
Why This Matters
This transformation signals a fundamental shift in the consulting industry’s business model and demonstrates how professional services firms must adapt to remain competitive in the AI era. BCG’s evolution from advisory services to AI product development reflects broader trends where domain expertise must be combined with technological capabilities.
The scale of BCG’s AI deployment — 36,000 custom GPTs — represents one of the largest enterprise AI implementations publicly disclosed, providing a blueprint for how large organizations can systematically integrate generative AI across operations. The three-tiered innovation structure and bottom-up approach offer valuable lessons for companies struggling to move beyond pilot projects to enterprise-wide AI adoption.
For the consulting industry specifically, this shift threatens traditional business models while creating new revenue opportunities. Firms that successfully transition to building and maintaining AI tools can capture ongoing technology implementation and maintenance revenue, rather than relying solely on project-based advisory fees. This also has implications for consulting employment, as technical skills become increasingly essential alongside traditional strategy capabilities.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/bcg-boston-consulting-group-ai-products-development-agents-2025-12