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Transforming Deloitte’s Approach to Consulting

What does it take to bring disruptive innovation to an established consulting firm?

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Pixel, started in 2014, helps facilitate open talent and crowdsourcing for Deloitte Consulting client engagements, to access specific expertise, collaborate to develop new products and insights, and to design, build, and test new digital assets.

But while some of Deloitte’s principals are avid users of Pixel’s services, uptake across the organization has been slow, and in some pockets has met with deep resistance. Balaji Bondili, head of Pixel, must decide how best to grow Deloitte Consulting’s use of on-demand talent, as consulting companies and their clients face transformative change.

Harvard Business School professor Mike Tushman discusses Deloitte’s challenges in pursuing this new approach to consulting in his case, “ Deloitte’s Pixel: Consulting with Open Talent .”

BRIAN KENNY: There are few topics in business media covered as widely and as deeply as innovation. A Google search on the term business innovation yields 672 million results. Harvard Business Review alone has close to 6,000 active articles on this topic. It’s the subject that never gets old because it’s inherently about change. Oh, and it’s really hard to do, especially if you’re in a place that is set in its ways. Management guru, Peter Drucker, famously said, “Innovate or die.” And there are far too many examples of firms that fail to follow that advice and pay the price. But in this episode, we’ll focus on a firm that’s trying to get it right. Today on Cold Call , we’ll discuss the case entitled, Deloitte’s Pixel, Consulting with Open Talent with Professor Mike Tushman. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on HBR Presents Network. Mike Tushman’s work focuses on relations between technological change, executive leadership, and organization adaptation. And he has just published a new book called, Corporate Explorers, How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game . That sounds exactly like the topic we’re going to discuss today, Mike. Thanks for joining me.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Hey, Brian, it’s so great to be with you.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. It’s fun to have you on the show. I want to talk about the case and I want to hear how those ideas relate to the ideas in Corporate Explorers , because there’s obviously a lot of crossover. We’ve had cases before that touch on this topic of how to innovate from within when you are in a well-established firm. And I think it’s so timely and relevant because many of our listeners are probably working in large established firms and they want to know how to innovate. They want to be the person who brings those energy and ideas to the surface. So thanks for being here today to talk about it.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Hey great, Brian, looking forward to engaging you and hopefully your audience in our work on the Corporate Explorer.

BRIAN KENNY: Awesome. So let’s just dive right in. Let me ask you to tell us what is the central theme of the case and what’s your cold call when you start the case discussion in the classroom.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: The central theme of the case, and indeed the central theme of my course, is to help our students build organizations that don’t drop in the face of outside technical change. That’s the basic point of my course is to empower my students with the research in my field, so they don’t fall prey to the sickness that most incumbent organizations have when the world changes sharply, whether it’s because of technology or because of COVID. My cold call is a double barrel cold call, Brian. The cold call to Balaji, Balaji Bondili, everybody, who is the corporate explorer, is: it’s either go big or go home. What are you going to do? And why are you going to do it? That’s my Balaji cold call to the Corporate Explorer.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: The other cold call I have is I ask the leaders of Deloitte Consulting, and by the way, this is a very, very successful organization, they’re at the top of the game, and I’m asking Matt David, who’s the head of Deloitte’s consulting business, why is he spending so much time on experimentation? You’ve got a great franchise. You’re doing super well in traditional consulting. Why so much time on experimentation? Those are my two cold calls, Brian.

BRIAN KENNY: All right. That’s a great way to start it off. And I love the idea of role playing. Maybe we should talk more about that as we get into the conversation and I know, you told me just before we started here, that you taught the course yesterday.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Yeah.

BRIAN KENNY: And Balaji was here, so you’ve got all these fresh ideas percolating. So this is going to be great. This is like right in the moment. Tell us a little bit about how this course relates to your research and to the ideas in Corporate Explorers .

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: My research has been from the get go on how incumbents deal with outside technical change. I went to Northeastern University as an undergraduate. I was an engineer co-op and I worked at a firm that was called General Radio, GenRad, and it was filled with these great, fantastic engineers going back and forth, talking about the celebration of how great General Radio was, outside technical change, all of a sudden my carpool friends don’t have a job. I was totally scarred by this. How could a firm filled with fantastic engineers fail so quickly? My model was you have great technical talent, wow, you can do anything. Well, it turns out that they were strangled by the arrogance of success. And I have been studying that for decades now with my students. So the point of my course is to help students understand several things, Brian. One is this notion of dynamic capabilities are rooted in playing two games well, simultaneously. A game of executing your existing strategy better than anybody on the planet, that’s one game. The second game is exploring into unknown futures. To play this explore and exploit game simultaneously, and those strategies are inconsistent. So all of my work has been helping senior leaders deal with paradox and inconsistency. General Radio couldn’t do it, all these engineers were laid off. Second theme of my work and my course is organizations don’t change through incremental change by itself. They change through both incremental and punctuated change and those punctuated changes occur at these discontinuities. The third observation is the way you play this game is you don’t spin out the explore option. You have these ambidextrous organizations that explore and exploit simultaneously and the ambidextrous leader is the one who hosts contradiction.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: And finally, the core idea of my book with Andy Binns and Charles O’Reilly, Corporate Explorer , is that it’s both top down, it’s from the C-level or the general manager level, and the entrepreneurs below in creating a social movement, so that firms evolve in this punctuated way.

BRIAN KENNY: And Deloitte’s a really interesting one for you to look at with regard to these topics. What’s the problem that they’re trying to solve in the context of this case?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: What’s so unique about Deloitte is they actually don’t have a problem to solve. They are doing rockingly well in the high-end strategic consulting business. They have an opportunity to destabilize the consulting industry, at least according to the senior leaders, if they can figure out a new way of doing consulting that complements their existing way, they have the opportunity to disrupt the industry to their favor. So it’s not that they have a problem to solve. It’s one of these rare examples of an opportunistic move by a really enlightened senior team to both do old-fashioned consulting really well and to do pixelated consulting really well simultaneously. And that is the challenge I want my students to leave prepared for is to lead into these opportunistic moments, which by the way, is partly organization renewal, Brian.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: But it’s also personal renewal. It’s the Matt Davids of the world personally renewing how they lead because now they’re hosting this contradiction: old fashioned consulting, new consulting simultaneously.

BRIAN KENNY: Can you put a finer line on that? What is the difference between sort of old fashioned consulting and pixelated consulting?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Old fashioned consulting, the edge of this case, old fashioned consulting, at least at Deloitte, is Deloitte would… They had an HR strategy of hiring from the best business schools and then they train and socialize these MBAs to be trusted advisors, to be really brilliant with expertise, and information, and synthesizing that information in front of a client.

BRIAN KENNY: Yep.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: And they do really well. That’s a business model that works.

BRIAN KENNY: We know a little about that here at Harvard business school.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Right. We sure do. Pixelating is completely different, Brian. Pixelating, what Balaji brings to the party is go to a client and say, “Here’s your strategic problem,” and they break it into components. And then they send the components of the work to freelance talent, gig talent, talent who in 100 years wouldn’t work for Deloitte, machine learning people, digital people, AI people, who don’t want to work for Deloitte. Balaji promises these really profoundly powerful platforms that bring talent to a client fast and inexpensive. That’s the difference, rather than having a bunch of really powerful consultants work on a project at a very high rate, Balaji gets better, faster, and less expensive client service with freelance talent. And it turns out it works really well. And the edge of the case is: this is really an identity threat at Deloitte.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: It’s an identity threat of the consultants who own problems and solve problems, and it’s an identity threat to the firm because after all we’re Deloitte and we have this brand, and can we retain this brand and can we retain the identity of our professionals even while we do this fundamentally different form of consulting.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, and it’s a great example of disruption happening right from within, so that’s the tension for sure in the case. And I want to talk a little bit more about that. Deloitte founded an Office for Innovation to sort of drive this, talk a little bit about that office, and I’d love to hear more about Balaji, background, and why he decided to take this on. This seems like a really dicey move for somebody who’s trying to build a career within the firm.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Yeah. What’s interesting about Balaji Bondili is he is a professional interested in client services. And I don’t want to speak for Balaji, but my sense of Balaji is he’s not anchored to Deloitte. He’ll do this work wherever. And I think he has found a way to do great professional service work, great client service work, and has enough of an entrepreneurial flare to push this inside of Deloitte. What we’ve learned in our Corporate Explorer book is there are a whole bunch of people like Balaji who tend to get ignored, is that they have the passion for entrepreneurialism. They have great change management skills and are able to help skeptical, in this case, partners change the coding of the work from a threat to an opportunity. And that is relatively rare. When a corporate explorer is able to help others who code that person as a threat to say, “Hey, wait a minute. Actually I can do better client service work and I can do it too.” The beauty of Balaji is he had the entrepreneurial edge and he wasn’t in their face. He had a lot of respect for the partners at Deloitte and brought them a tool that could help them do their work better. So partly it’s bottom up, Brian, and partly he could not have done this and he knows it, he could not have done it without really strong senior support with Matt David. What is so nice about the Deloitte case, Brian, is it starts with really senior level support, that is the head of U.S. Deloitte says we need an Office of Innovation, tax, audit, consulting. We need a view into the future and they create this Office of Innovation, which hosts roughly 60 experiments, Brian. And then Amy Feirn says in consulting, “I’m going to take some of those and bring them into consulting.” That was Balaji. There were maybe 20 experiments inside just consulting. So the Office of Innovation was a corporate level hatchery, if you will. We talk about ideation and incubation going to scale, they incubate a bunch of things at corporate and then some of them are dropped down into the business units, tax, audit, in this case consulting. So the corporate level Office of Innovation provides the overall senior support that permitted Matt David in consulting to experiment, which in turn permitted Balaji to be the corporate explorer.

BRIAN KENNY: What kind of a welcome did Balaji receive as he started to socialize this idea with the rank and file consultants, the people who were leading the client work?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: It was a third of the partners said, “Hey, Balaji, this could be fantastic.” Two thirds said, “Please go away.” And it was either aggressive please go away or was passive aggressive, “Hey, we’ll study this Balaji.” And so the nub of the case is if your Balaji, who knows he has something big, do you try to go big inside Deloitte or do you leave? Do you go home? And if you stay, what do you need from the leadership community to make this thing real?

BRIAN KENNY: You talked about some of the pilots that they launched and I imagine the pilots were a way to demonstrate the efficacy of this approach to people who were leading client teams and to get their buy-in so that they would think yeah, I can have it both ways. Right? Can you give some examples of what some of those pilots were? Because I’m curious again, about the pixelated approach and how different that sounds to me than what I’m familiar with having worked with consultancies over the years.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: So Balaji was pressed when Pixel was brought down into consulting to provide case and points, data points, will this thing work, will clients pay for this? What are client’s response to this? You’re not using Deloitte partners, you’re using freelance talent. Would clients buy this? They had projects with Richard Walker, who’s one of the individuals in the case, who was a partner in the banking piece of consulting, who actually loved it. And they would take strategy projects for one of their major clients, and it had a big AI machine learning piece to it, and they pixelated it and they got a great solution to this banking strategy. And the client thought it was better. Once Balaji had two or three of these examples, skeptical partners said, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s happening over here in banking with Richard Walker? And once credible leaders across the organization picked this up, Brian, then it took off like wildfire.

BRIAN KENNY: If you look at the tension that’s underlying this case, I have to admit, I probably would be in one of those two thirds, that group of two thirds consultants, who is like, wait a second, this is a threat to me and my role. If we’re going to have gig consultants coming in and doing all this client work, and it’s going to cost less, and they’re going to deliver a better product, that to me sounds like a real danger to my career. How did Balaji manage some of that tension that I’m sure he was hearing about from within the firm?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Yeah, that is the exact nub of my work on structural ambidexterity, Brian. It’s up to the corporate explorer to help these powerful partners recode this from a threat to an opportunity. Partly Balaji can do that by making it easy by not being in their faces, by being very solicitous of the partners need to do great client service work. The edge for your question is with Matt David, who was the leader of the consulting business, who had to create a narrative in his organization of we’re going to do the old kind of work, traditional consulting work better than anybody in the planet, and we’re going to go do this new work because the future is not the past and we’re going to experiment into the future. That’s the challenge of my ambidextrous leader, who is Matt David, who is pushing the organization that can celebrate the past, and can own the future, and they’re contradictory. That’s what the Matt Davids of the world have to bring to the party. And one of the things we’ve learned, and it’s a big part of my work with Charles O’Reilly and with Andy Binns, is one of the roles of the Matt Davids is to help create an identity for their firm or my friend, Ranjay Gulati, talks about purpose, as we aspire to be the world’s greatest consulting firm. This is my word’s not theirs.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: And if you’re Matt David with that kind of aspiration, or Srikant at HBS, we’re here to create leaders who make a difference in the world. Well, we can do that through Advanced Management Program (AMP) on campus and we can do that through AMP online.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: And yeah, they’re completely different architectures, and structures, and cultures, but that’s what we’re all about, creating leaders who make a difference in the world. That kind of overarching purpose or identity helped Matt David at Deloitte with a narrative to his powerful partners to say, “Hey everybody, we’re going to embrace the future, and we’re going to embrace the past, and yes, it’s contradictory. We’re going to do it together to be the world’s greatest consulting firm.”

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And that takes leadership that is not just visionary, but also really client centric so that they’re not going to let the politics, the internal politics of the firm prevent them from pushing this forward because they know it’s the right thing in the end for client service.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: When you have that kind of aspiration, world class client service, or the work I did with one of my doctoral students, Hila Lifshitz, on NASA. One of the things they found is that the scientists at NASA rejected open innovation, open research. And as soon as the leader said, “Hey, we’re here not to do great research, we’re here to keep astronauts safe in space,” that new coding permitted these scientists to do research the old fashioned way and the new way.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: So that passion, that identity, that strategic intent is a real important piece of my research of structural ambidexterity and how to make that work and is a big part of this Deloitte Pixel case.

BRIAN KENNY: Do you think… This is probably a question with no singular answer, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you think it’s harder to be an entrepreneur within a firm or to be an entrepreneur who’s starting your own thing and kind of putting it all together on your own?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: I think it’s both really difficult, Brian. The challenge for the corporate explorer is less the capital markets, because the reason he’s going to do it at Deloitte is because Deloitte has the cash to fund it. But the risk is much more, can you get an organization to change?

BRIAN KENNY: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Can you create a social movement? And the research is really clear, exploit kills explore. The better you are at doing what you’re currently doing, the worse you are at exploring. And the challenge for the corporate explorer is to create a social movement, when the powerful actors don’t want to do it. So you can’t do it on your own, you have to do it both top down and bottom up. And the big aha for me in this research over the past 10 years, it’s not just top down, because we have many examples of top down leaders that get stuck because they’re no corporate explorers. So it’s a combination of top down and bottom up that creates this social movement around change.

BRIAN KENNY: Let’s say we’ve got some senior executives that are listening to this podcast right now and they’re thinking, wow, I better get on this, how do they identify a corporate explorer within their midst? Do you advertise that as a new job? Or how do you think about that?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Wow. Great question. Our most successful corporate explorers are those individuals who have legitimacy and credibility inside your firm.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: The combination of credibility, this individual has the technical capability, has the social networks in the firm, and they have an edge about them, an entrepreneurial edge around the future, those are the corporate explorers that work. What we know from our research, Brian, is the extent to which you go out and hire someone like that and bring them in, they’ll almost always fail.

BRIAN KENNY: Why is that?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Because they don’t have the social networks, they don’t have the credibility, they don’t have the legitimacy inside the firm. The beauty of Balaji at Deloitte is he was known quantity. People knew him and trusted him and he had the degrees of freedom to play this exploration game and then build these networks.

BRIAN KENNY: Okay. Let me ask the same question in the inverse. If I feel like I am that person that you just described and I’m listening to this podcast, how do I create that sense of urgency, create that burning platform to my leadership team so that they know we got to do this?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Yeah. Yeah, really great.

BRIAN KENNY: This is what I call a cold call, Mike. I’m putting you on the hot seat.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: Yeah. Yeah, no, this is a great, great question. For those explorers who have a potentially great idea, and again, ideation and incubation circa 2022, I think is relatively easy to do. It’s relatively easy to get ideas, it’s relatively easy to incubate either inside a firm or outside a firm. It’s really hard to pivot to scale whether you’re an entrepreneur on your own or an entrepreneur inside the firm.

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: So to me, it’s the, of the Balajis of the world, the possible set of corporate explorers, can you find an organization that has the cash, the willingness, and has the identity of playing multiple games well simultaneously? They’re comfortable with today, but they’re really, really uncomfortable with the uncertainty of tomorrow and therefore they want to create it. If I can find those kinds of leaders in incumbent firms, those are the ones I want to work with if I’m a corporate explorer. If I can’t find them, I’ll stick on my own.

BRIAN KENNY: Mike, this has been a great conversation. I can’t let you go without asking one more question, which is, if you want our listeners to remember one thing about the “Deloitte” case and about Corporate Explorers , what would that be?

MICHAEL TUSHMAN: You cannot get to the future by doing what you have done in the past. It’s imperative that you excel in what you’re currently doing and create the future and that’s what the role of corporate explorers are. They help you create the future and to do that, it’s the structural ambidexterity, which is pretty straightforward, structure is structure, but that link to a purpose and identity that permits contradiction to exist in your organizations. That’s my sort of long-winded answer to your short question, Brian.

BRIAN KENNY: Mike Tushman, thanks so much for being here today to talk about the case.

BRIAN KENNY: We are excited to be celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the case method at Harvard Business School. If you want more on the history of the case method, visit our website: www.hbs.edu/casemethod100 . Cold Call is a great way to get a taste of the case method, after all each episode features a business case and its faculty author. You might also like our other podcasts: After Hours , Climate Rising , Skydeck , and Managing the Future of Work . Find them on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you enjoy Cold Call or if you have any suggestions, we want to hear from you. Write a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen or email us at [email protected] . Thanks again for joining us. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School, brought to you by the HBR Presents network.

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How to solve problems at work, says Deloitte exec: 'My best idea didn't come when I was sitting tied to a desk'

Deborah Golden has a pretty unique job: As consulting firm Deloitte's chief innovation officer , she gets to "solve really hard problems," she says. Often this can mean leaning into emerging technologies to evolve offerings and products for clients.

"I'm very good at seeing A to Z," she says.

While Golden's job calls for solving big problems on an organizational level, every worker comes across snags in their day-to-day, even if they only have to deal with their specific duties. And with so much going on, it can be easy to get stuck on how to solve those problems.

If you can't figure out how to trim a growing bottom line, how to train your employees in the best way, how to write the next slide in your presentation — and so on, here are a few ways to clear your head and hit refresh on your brain to come up with some solutions.

'It's beautiful outside, you want to go for a walk?'

One good way to get the juices flowing is to step away from your screen. "Have a walking meeting," suggests Golden. She gives the example of a recent meeting she had in which she and a colleague were tackling problems in the pharmaceutical industry.

"I looked at my colleague and I said, 'it's beautiful outside, you want to go for a walk?'" she says. "That was my walking meeting. We spent 30 minutes outside, no laptops, no phones." When they got back, they rushed to their computers to write down the three points they'd come up with.

There's evidence this kind of practice helps rejuvenate your mind. Fresh air and exercise can stimulate blood flow to the brain, which ultimately helps with focus and clarity, certified health and wellness coach Marissa Vicario previously told NBC News .

'You have 30 seconds, go grab something'

If you're a manager and are about to have a meeting with your reports, one good way to help clear their minds is to start the meeting with an exercise.

"I always do an icebreaker at every start of every meeting," says Golden, adding that, "an easy one is, 'you have 30 seconds, go grab something, no matter where you are, and you have to come back and in less than 30 seconds, you have to tell us why you grabbed it.'"

This also helps people disconnect and get some blood flowing in their brains and bodies, and puts "an ease to solving some of the challenges that you're solving in that 30 minutes," she says.

Hit refresh in 'one minute, five minute and 15-minute increments'

"We tend to say we're going to refresh our brain when we take a vacation or at the weekend," says Golden. But you can give your brain refreshers throughout the day.

"What I encourage everyone to very simply do," she says, is "write down on a piece of paper what are the ways that you can refresh your brain in one minute, five minute and 15-minute increments." Call someone you love and tell them you love them. Do a crossword puzzle. Go for a jog. Do jumping jacks in the room — whatever is going to get you to disconnect for that period of time and come back to your task anew.

"My best idea didn't come when I was sitting tied to a desk," she says. "It came when I was outside, when I was in the shower, when I was on a plane, when I was listening to music, when I was running … That's when the ideas come."

Create those opportunities for yourself even during the workday and see what you can accomplish.

Want to earn more and land your dream job?  Join the free CNBC Make It: Your Money virtual event  on Oct. 17 at 1 p.m. ET to learn how to level up your interview and negotiating skills, build your ideal career, boost your income and grow your wealth.  Register  for free today.

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How to get over writer's block, unlock your creativity, and brainstorm great ideas

3 ways to use AI right now to get ahead—if you do, you're 'really going to succeed,' says expert

4 sure-fire ways to stimulate creativity

At the core of our methodology is the Foresight Framework, a proven and proprietary methodology to find future innovation opportunities and to create forward-looking organizations. The methodology began at Stanford University and has been tested with various teams and companies since 2004. Comprised of 15 core methods for problem scoping and problem solving, the Foresight Framework is designed to address complex problems and future planning as systematically, creatively, and efficiently as possible.

By using this framework, participants prepare successfully for the future by answering three fundamental questions:

• How do I begin looking for future opportunities?
• How can I create a path to these opportunities that anticipates the inevitable changes along the way?
• What can I start doing today that will help me get there first?

Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation

Looking for practical foresight methods? Download a free PDF of our playbook (or  buy a print version ) as your in-house guide.

Phase I: Perspective

Methods in the Perspective phase give you a broad frame of reference, holding up a mirror to the past so you may better anticipate the future.

Phase II: Opportunity

By understanding future customer changes, methods in the Opportunity phase help you develop an ability to see growth opportunities that exist today and extend into the future.

Phase III: Solution

Methods in the Solution phase seek to define the questions that exist along different paths to innovation, which are specific to your industry, customers, organization, and team skills.

Phase IV: Team

Methods in the Team phase focus on finding the talent and leadership your team needs to take an idea forward as a new opportunity or innovation.

Phase V: Vision

Methods in the Vision phase sharpen your team’s vision so that it may take on a life of its own and guide everyone’s actions forward.​

General Non-Commercial Use​

• Under the creative commons license ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 ), the  Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation  is available for free download to individuals, companies, and organizations for non-commercial purposes only. 
• Parties interested in applying the foresight methods from the Foresight Framework for internal development, university teaching or educational reasons, or other purposes may do so with attribution and with no intention to profit.
• Other third party trademarks referenced on the website and in the Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation are the property of their respective owners.

Commercial Use

• Commercial usage of the Foresight Framework and all related methods are restricted and full copyright are retained by the book's authors. You may not use trademarks, methods, or other intellectual property assets in connection with web sites, products, packaging, manuals, promotional/advertising materials, or for any other purpose except pursuant to an express written licensing agreement from the publisher. Contact the Innovation Leadership Group LLC's licensing team [email protected]  for more information.​

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Problem-Solving Frameworks: Go Down to the Root

Problems of all shapes and sizes pop up on a daily basis. So the big question is: How to solve them? We bring you several frameworks that could help.

Do you consider yourself a problem-solver? Well, you certainly should. Because that's what you and your team do every day. 

First and foremost, you solve the problems that your prospective customers have, for which they want to find a solution (i.e. your product).

Then, there are unexpected errors and usability issues that your existing users face while using your product, or the bugs that your engineers encounter.

On a higher level, you need to find the right solution for the new features you want to develop, discover new opportunities for growth, and so much more. 

Now, the big question is: How to solve all those problems?  

We bring you several problem-solving frameworks that could help.

In this chapter

• Icons 300 The Phoenix Checklist
• Icons 300 Root Cause Analysis
• Icons 300 CIRCLES Method
• Icons 300 The mathematician’s “universal” way

The Phoenix Checklist #

Have you ever wondered how the CIA goes about solving problems ? Well, they’ve developed The Phoenix Checklist to “encourage agents to look at a challenge from many different angles”.

The Phoenix Checklist was popularized by Michael Michalko, a former CIA creative consultant, in his book Thinkertoys , as a blueprint for dissecting the problem into knowns and unknowns to find the best possible solution.     

Some of the questions of The Phoenix Checklist are:

Why is it necessary to solve this particular problem?

What benefits will you receive by solving it?

What is the information you have?

Is the information sufficient? 

What is the unknown?

What isn't a problem?

Should you draw a diagram of the problem? A figure?

Where are the boundaries of the problem?

What are the constants of the problem?

Have you seen this problem before?

If you find a similar problem that has already been solved, can you use its method?

Can you restate the problem? How many different ways can you restate it?

What are the best, worst, and most probable solutions you can imagine?

There’s no doubt that The Phoenix Checklist can be a complementary problem-solving technique for your product team, even though it wasn’t developed with product managers in mind. Use it to frame, deconstruct, and reframe the problems you encounter.

Root Cause Analysis #

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a problem-solving method that aims at identifying the root cause of a problem by moving back to its origin, as opposed to techniques that only address and treat the symptoms.

The RCA is corrective in its nature with a final goal to prevent the same problem from happening again in the future. But that doesn’t mean that root cause investigation is simple or that it only needs to be done once. 

The starting questions are: 

What is currently the problem?

Why does this problem occur?

But don’t stop at the first why. Keep asking why that happened , until you get to the bottom and the real cause.

When you first start using the RCA method, it will be a reactive approach to solving problems. It is typically in use when something goes wrong. But once you perfect this technique, you can use it as a proactive action towards identifying problems before they happen and preventing them from happening. The end goal of the Root Cause Analysis is continuous improvement.

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CIRCLES Method #

The CIRCLES method is a problem-solving framework that helps product managers provide a meaningful response to any questions coming from design, marketing, customer success, or other teams. 

The creator of the CIRCLES method is Lewis C. Lin, author of the book Decode and Conquer . The way he explains it , you should always start by clarifying the goal, identifying the constraints up front, and understanding the context of the situation.

The seven steps of the CIRCLES method are:

Comprehend the situation: Understand the context of the problem you’re solving

Identify the customer: Know who you’re building the product for

Report customer’s needs: Rely on the customer research to uncover pain points 

Cut, through prioritization: Omit unnecessary ideas, tasks, and solutions

List solutions: Keep the focus on the most feasible solutions

Evaluate tradeoffs: Consider the impact, cost of delay, and other factors

Summarize your recommendation: Make a decision and explain your reasoning

The main goal of the CIRCLES method is to help you keep an open mind as you move through the steps, as well as to avoid jumping straight into the conclusions.

The mathematician’s “universal” way #

Although there isn’t exactly a universal way to solve problems that would perfectly fit every situation and scenario, mathematician Claude Shannon developed a strong problem-solving system that has given results across disciplines.

The essential part of his framework involves creative thinking to get out of standard mental loops, critical thinking to question every answer and every possible solution, and the process of restructuring a problem , whether it’s by maximizing it, minimizing it, contrasting it, inverting it, or anything else. 

As explained in the article from Quartz :

"Claude Shannon didn’t just formulate a question and then look for answers. He was methodological in developing a process to help him see beyond what was in sight."

Shannon’s problem-solving process includes:

Finding a problem

Understanding a problem

Going beyond obvious questions

Defining a shape and a form of a problem

Focusing on essential details, but always keeping a bigger picture in mind

Changing a reference point and reframing a point of view

Uncovering insights from the sea of information

That said, Claude Shannon certainly developed a methodology that is relevant for every problem-solving situation, not only math problems. 

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Deloitte Case Interview: 6 Tips to Help You Ace Your Case

• Last Updated January, 2022

What Does it Looks like?

6 Tips on Acing the Deloitte Case Interview

What to Expect?

Deloitte Group Case Interviews

Sample Deloitte Case Interviews

Deloitte Behavioral Interview

The Deloitte Case Interview: What to Expect

Deloitte Group Case Interview

Have an interview with Deloitte Consulting coming up? If so, you’ll want to know what to expect and how to prepare.

We’ve got you covered, including our 6 tips on how to ace your Deloitte case interview!

In this article, we’ll discuss:

• What the Deloitte Consulting case interview process looks like,
• The Deloitte case interview: what to expect,
• Sample Deloitte case interviews,
• Our 6 tips on acing the Deloitte case interview,
• The Deloitte group case interview, and
• The Deloitte behavioral interview question.

Let’s get started!

What the Deloitte Consulting Interview Process Looks Like

Initial application.

The Deloitte Consulting interview process has 4 steps:

• Application
• Online assessment
• First round interviews
• Final round interviews

If you’re a student, make sure you know if you need to apply directly to Deloitte Consulting or through your career center.

As part of your application, you’ll need to submit your resume and, for campus hires, your academic transcript. Research which office you want to apply for as you’ll need to state that at this stage.

Nail the case & fit interview with strategies from former MBB Interviewers that have helped 89.6% of our clients pass the case interview.

Deloitte Online Assessment

The second stage of the Deloitte Consulting recruitment process is an online assessment. This assessment tests numerical reasoning and your situational judgment.

Information from recent candidates suggests there are 35 questions split over 5 distinct sections. We’ve got all you need to know about this part of the process in our article, Deloitte Online Assessment: What It Is & How To Pass .

Deloitte Consulting First Round Interviews

If you’re selected for a Deloitte interview you’ll be contacted via your campus career center or direct by the Deloitte recruiting team.

For campus hires, first-round interviews often take place on campus and include one or 2 interviews. These interviews include both case and behavioral interview questions. We’ve heard the cases include market-sizing as well as the non-profit sector.

The same types of interviews are used for non-campus hires.

Deloitte Consulting Final Round Interviews

Final round interviews may take place virtually, on campus, or in a Deloitte office. While the exact format depends on the position you’re applying to, expect both behavioral and case interviews at this stage. Candidates may also have a group case interview.

Deloitte will let you know the outcome of your application within a week of the final round interview.

Case interviews can feel daunting for many candidates. In this section, we’ll cover what type of cases Deloitte uses and how to approach them so you can feel confident in tackling them.

What Exactly Is a Case Interview?

A case interview is an interview conducted within a business context.

The interviewer will present information about a company and a business problem it faces. These 2 elements together are known as a case.

Case interviews can either be candidate-led or interviewer-led depending on who is expected to steer the order in which different aspects of the case are analyzed.

Deloitte case interviews are predominantly candidate-led which means they’ll be looking to you to take control of solving the case — breaking down the problem, choosing a suitable business framework, and asking for appropriate data to fill in the gaps.

What Type Of Cases Does Deloitte Consulting Use?

The branch of Deloitte Consulting you are applying for can influence the business context you receive in the case. There are 3 parts to Deloitte Consulting:

• Strategy and Operations (S&O) focuses on corporate issues such as organizational strategy, supply-chain improvement, operating model transformation, and business process improvements.
• Technology Consulting focuses on technology issues such as digital strategy, IT program delivery, infrastructure and software solutions, and cybersecurity.
• Human Capital focuses on people issues such as organizational transformation, cultural change, knowledge management, and talent acquisition and development.

So, if you were applying for a Human Capital role you might get an organizational transformation case or, if you were applying to S&O you might get an organizational strategy case

Whichever branch you’re applying to, there are going to be certain skills Deloitte Consulting is looking to test through the case interview process.

What Skills Is Deloitte Consulting Looking to Assess?

Deloitte uses case interviews as a way to assess skills it values in its consultants.

• Structured problem solving
• Analytic skills
• A balance of creativity and practicality

Structured Problem Solving

The ability to carefully think through a problem in a structured and logical way, is a key skillset for consultants. You’ll need to be able to break down a business problem to identify and analyze root causes and potential solutions.

Case interviews test this skill by providing lots of data for you to manage within an unfamiliar business context. Your ability to sort through information to pull out what’s most relevant to the issue will be assessed.

Analytic Skills

Deloitte Consulting will assess your numerical ability during the case interview. Make sure you brush up on your math skills in advance of the interview. Our article on Case Math tells you what to expect.

A Balance of Creativity and Practicality

Case interviews give Deloitte recruiters a chance to see how creative you are when searching for an answer to a thorny problem. Clients hire consultants to solve complex, multi-factor problems, not for mundane issues they can solve themselves.

However, innovative thinking needs to be balanced with good business sense. Suggesting solutions that aren’t viable or attractive to the client shows you lack practical business judgment.

Whatever your recommendation, make sure you highlight the risks associated with it and how those could be managed.

Case interviews can feel challenging — very like tackling a real-life client problem! They’re the perfect environment for interviewers to see how comfortable you are with ambiguity and how resilient you are when things get tough.

Whether that’s grappling with a tricky calculation, or struggling to see how the pieces fit together, make sure you don’t give up. Take a breath and give yourself a moment to clear your head. Then jump back in and keep going.

How Do I Tackle a Deloitte Consulting Case Interview?

There are 4 key stages to tackling any case interview:

• Opening . Make sure you fully understand the client’s problem. Repeat back to the interviewer your understanding of the issue so they have a chance to guide you if you’ve misunderstood. Ask any clarification questions you need.
• Structure . Brainstorm all the issues or factors related to the client’s problem that need to be considered. Be explicit about any underlying assumptions you are making to check their accuracy with your interviewer. Organize your thoughts into a logical sequence to make sure you tackle all of them in your analysis.
• Analysis . Gather and review all the data available to you. Data can be communicated directly by your interviewer or come in the form of exhibit. Complete any calculations required. Identify the most important issues and use this to formulate a recommendation.
• Conclusion . Present your findings to the interviewer and give your final recommendation. State any risks associated with the recommendation and how you’d mitigate them. Outline the next steps and the expected result of taking them.

For more information on using these 4 steps to tackle case interviews see Our Ultimate Guide to Case Interview Prep .

Once you’ve got the 4 stages nailed, it’s time to practice! Doing the thinking is only half the battle in a case interview, you’ve also got to effectively communicate your thoughts.

Practicing with friends, people in your network who are also going through the process, or with former consultants who can coach you through it, is critical to your confidence and success.

Links to Sample Deloitte Case Interviews

You can find links to several Deloitte case interviews in our Case Interview Examples article, as well as dozens of cases from other major consulting firms. The Footloose example has a lot of data exhibits so it’s a good one for practicing how to effectively manage information.

In addition, Deloitte has a very helpful tool on their site that helps you practice case interviews. Each of these cases is 15–20 minutes long and presents you with a real-life business problem and a number of questions.

You can prepare your answers to these cases then compare your thoughts to the Deloitte model answers provided.

Our 6 Tips on Acing the Deloitte Case Interview

Tip 1: keep organized notes.

Deloitte case interviews can last up to an hour and have a lot of information to review. Make sure you take organized notes throughout so you don’t forget anything important or miss something in your analysis.

Neat and logical notes also show you can manage large amounts of data effectively.

Tip 2: Ask Questions to Fill In the Gaps

It’s important to fully understand the problem you’re trying to solve. Don’t be afraid to ask clarification questions or for more data to fill in any gaps in your analysis. Asking questions gives the interviewer insight into how you’re approaching the problem.

Tip 3: Take Time to Organize Your Thoughts

Make sure you take your time during the interview to compose yourself and structure your thoughts. It’s tempting to launch into responding straight away but give yourself space to think through your answer first to make sure you don’t miss something or forget an important point.

Tip 4: Utilize a Framework and Develop a Hypothesis

Using a business framework or an issue tree helps you drill down into the heart of the problem. This means you’re more likely to develop a hypothesis that solves the key issue the client is facing.

Keep referring back to your issue tree and hypothesis during your Deloitte interview to make sure your analysis is logical and hasn’t gone down a rabbit hole!

Tip 5: Structure Your Recommendation

Present your analysis in a clear and structured way. Start with the main takeaway — your recommendation. Then walk your Deloitte interviewer through your analysis in a logical way, highlighting the most important points and explaining how they led you to draw the conclusion you have.

Share any assumptions you’ve made to reach your recommendation and also any associated risks. This shows you’ve thought more broadly about the problem in the context of the business as a whole.

Tip 6: Don’t Forget to Breathe!

While case interviews can feel daunting, try not to panic. Viewing the case as a business conversation that showcases your ability to think through a problem, rather than as something that must be solved, can ease the pressure.

As part of the final round assessment, Deloitte Consulting uses group case interviews.

As many of the top consulting firms don’t use group case interviews, candidates can be unsure of what to expect. But, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!

What Happens In the Deloitte Group Case Interview

In Deloitte group case interviews you’ll be organized into a group with 3-6 other candidates. The group will be presented with information about a case that they’ll need to work together to solve.

• For the first 10 minutes, you’ll work alone, or in a pair, to review the information and prepare your thoughts.
• The group will then discuss the problem for 20 minutes, sharing analysis, and preparing a recommendation for the client. During this discussion, interviewers will observe the group to see how you interact with each other.
• For the final 20 minutes, interviewers will ask questions of the group.

Our Top Tips for the Deloitte Group Interview

Group case interviews are your opportunity to stand out against other candidates. Interviewers will be observing the group dynamics and looking for great communication skills, strong analysis, and leadership.

Here are our top tips:

• Add value with your contribution . Everyone knows interviewers are looking for participation but it’s not enough just to speak up during the group case interview — what you say matters. Your contribution should add fresh insights to what’s already been said. This shows good listening and analysis skills.
• Showcase your leadership ability . Leadership isn’t just about speaking first or dominating the conversation. Facilitate the conversation and bring other team members into the discussion if they haven’t had a chance to speak. This shows you value the contribution of others, which links to one of Deloitte’s core values: foster inclusion . Do be proactive about proposing points for discussion, managing time, and bringing the group back on track if you lose focus.
• Recognize others as teammates . While demonstrating leadership is important, it’s equally important to remember you’re trying to deliver value to the client. Make contributions that bring the group closer to a recommendation — don’t sidetrack the discussion just to stand out. Acknowledge the great ideas of others — which shows confidence — and then add to them.
• Summarize the discussion . At the end of the group discussion, summarize the main points of the conversation and state the group’s recommendation. You can also do this throughout the interview, any time when a lot of points have been discussed and a quick recap would be helpful.

This is important as it shows good communication skills and the ability to synthesize large amounts of data. It also makes sure that everyone’s on the same page and clear about the next steps, which is critical when dealing with real-life clients.

For more information on how to ace the group case interview, check out our article .

Deloitte Consulting Behavioral Interview Question

The Deloitte behavioral interview has 2 types of questions: fit questions and personal experience questions.

Fit questions help interviewers judge whether you’d fit into the Deloitte culture. Personal experience questions help them judge whether your skills and personal qualities match those they’re looking for in a consultant.

Top 3 Fit Questions and How To Ace Them

1. Why Do You Want To Work For Deloitte Consulting?

This is the top fit question and for good reason. Deloitte Consulting cares about recruiting people who really want to work there and value its specific culture and approach. 

Consulting firms invest heavily in developing their new recruits and they need you to stay long enough to make that investment worth it. So they’re expecting you to join the firm with eyes wide open.

Tackle this question by having a few good reasons why Deloitte is the company for you. The best answers are personal to you. 

Maybe you’ve been inspired by someone you’ve met from the firm. Or there’s something about Deloitte core values that really matters to you. That’s what recruiters want to hear about.

Deloitte Consulting’s core values are:

• Lead the way
• Serve with integrity
• Take care of each other
• Foster inclusion
• Collaborate for measurable impact

2. Why Consulting?

Consulting can be intense, so consulting firms are genuinely concerned that you understand what’s required of you and have the potential to meet the challenge. This question is your chance to explain why consulting is the career for you.

Whether that’s because you get to work with senior management early in your career or you’re excited about the opportunity to make a difference, make sure you’re clear on your motivation.

3. Tell Me Something About You That’s Not On Your Resume.

It’s easy to curate a polished, professional profile on paper. But interviewers are interested in who you are outside of work too.

This question provides an opportunity for you to talk about something you’re passionate about, and show a more human side. Bear in mind the Deloitte Consulting core values when you’re considering how you’d tackle this question.

For example, maybe you organize a community garden to provide food to local families. Or you spend time as a reading volunteer at your local care home.

Contributions you make as a volunteer can demonstrate your leadership capability as well as other ways you create a positive impact in your daily life.

Personal Experience Questions And How to Approach Them

A typical personal experience question starts with “Tell me about a time when…”

They help the interviewer see how your experience has helped you build the skills that make you suitable for consulting.

Examples include:

• Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone and how you worked through the problem.
• Tell me about a time when you led a team to solve a problem.
• Give me an example of when you had to deal with adversity. How did you resolve it?
• Tell me about a time when you changed someone’s mind on an important topic.
• How did you go about deciding on your class project recommendation?

The best approach to tackling a personal experience question is to tell stories. Stories are engaging and stick in the interviewer’s mind even after a long day.

However, like everything else in the case interview, your answer should be well-thought-through and structured. Don’t just launch into your story without thinking.

We recommend using the A STAR(E) framework to make sure your story is impactful and covers all the main points.

Using the A STAR(E) Framework

The A STAR(E) framework covers the following points:

• Answer . Start with a clear, short answer to the question.
• Situation . Give your story some context. Who were the people involved in the story? When and where did it take place?
• Tension . What was the problem you faced? The conflict or challenge?
• Action . What action did you take to resolve the issue?
• Result . What happened as a result of your action?
• Effect . What did you learn?

The (E) is in parentheses because this won’t be relevant to every story.

Remember the behavioral interview is also an important opportunity to learn more about Deloitte so you can feel confident you’re making the right choice.

In fact, that’s one of 6 key things Deloitte Consulting encourages candidates to bear in mind when tackling the behavioral interview:

• Share personal experiences to illustrate your critical skills and achievements.
• Describe experiences and career/life periods reflected in your resume.
• Focus on the positives of all your past experiences and remain optimistic.
• Use this discussion to learn more about Deloitte Consulting.
• Relax, be yourself, and help us get to know you.
• Use your time wisely; it’s your time, make sure you get your points across.

Learn more about the A STAR(E) framework or about tackling the Fit/Behavioral Interview in our article on Consulting Behavioral Interviews.

In this article, we’ve covered:

• The stages of the Deloitte Consulting interview process,
• What to expect from the Deloitte Consulting case interview,
• Some examples of Deloitte case interviews,
• Our top 6 tips for tackling the Deloitte case interview,
• How to ace the Deloitte group case interview, and
• How to answer Deloitte behavioral interview questions.

Still have questions?

If you have more questions about Deloitte case interview prep, leave them in the comments below. One of My Consulting Offer’s case coaches will answer them.

Other people prepping for the Deloitte case interview found the following pages helpful:

• Our Ultimate Guide to Case Interview Prep
• The Big 4: How Do They Fit Into the Consulting Industry
• Group Case Interview
• Behavioral Interviews
• Deloitte Government & Public Services Case Interview

Help with Consulting Interview Prep

Thanks for turning to My Consulting Offer for advice on Deloitte case interview prep. My Consulting Offer has helped almost 85% of the people we’ve worked with to get a job in management consulting. We want you to be successful in your consulting interviews too. For example, here is how Lindsay was able to get her offer from Deloitte.

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3 Top Strategies to Master the Case Interview in Under a Week

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What kind of frameworks can i apply to solve case study for a fintech consultant role at deloitte canada.

I'm interviewing for a Financial transformation Consultant role at Deloitte Canada , and am quite nervous about the preparation as I do not have prior experience in either interviewing with Big 4 or case studies as such. I wish I had the privilege to receive more time for preparation but unfortunately this role is an urgent requirement and they are filling in ASAP.

Overview of answers

• Date ascending
• Date descending

Hi Anonymous,

the initial structure you use in a case depends on the case itself – thus just knowing the position is for a FinTech Consultant role doesn’t make possible to suggest a specific one you could use. It is likely you will find operations cases given the role, but there are no guarantees.

I agree with Vlad and would try to reschedule the interview – many candidates prepare for case interviews in tens of hours and you would be at disadvantage compared to the competition if you don’t do a minimum of 25-30 cases before the first interview. If that’s impossible, I would recommend to still practice as much as possible with experiences peers or experts before the day of the interview.

In terms of specific suggestion for the prep, I would recommend the following:

• Define a calendar for your preparation. Identify how many hours you have before your expected interviews, then allocate a time slot for preparation in your calendar for each day, working on the following points.
• Read Case In Point or Case Interview Secrets for a general understanding of what a consulting interview is. Don’t focus on the structures proposed in the books though, as they are not good enough nowadays.
• Start reading good MBA Consulting Handbooks – you can find several for free online (Insead is a good one to start). Read the cases and try to apply your structure. Whenever you see there is something missing, upgrade your structure with the new insides. Try to read at least a new case per day – in this way you will absorb a lot better the information with constant learning. Structure your remaining daily preparation with at least 5-10 minutes per day for each of the following: market sizing, fit questions and mental math .
• After you have read the first 10 cases in books/handbooks and basic theory, start to practice live . There is a relevant part of the interview score that is based on your communication, which you cannot practice at all if you read cases only. Keep track of your mistakes and see if you repeat them. If so, try to identify the source of the mistake (feedback of experienced partners would be particularly useful for this). Be sure to focus on both fit and case .
• Once you feel you are not improving anymore, if you have a tight time constraint or if you want a realistic assessment of your level, consider using support from experts to strengthen your performance
• Before the interview, be sure to prepare your questions for the interviewer – great way to show you prepare in advance and to connect more with the interviewer for a good final impression.

Thanks for the advise, I'll take that into consideration.

Hi, with no chance to postpone because of this urgency, the only thing you can do is set up a structured preparation plan that quickly fixes the theory (e.g. with Cosentino's case in point and articles here in the platform https://www.preplounge.com/en/bootcamp.php ) and then makes you practice with good candidates some mock case (ideally more than 30). How much time do you have before the interview?

Best, Antonello

Thank you, I requested the HR. Meanwhile, I'll go through the link you shared and work on building strong case study interviewing skills.

Solving cases is not about the frameworks. Please reschedule your interview if you are not prepared. Any asap role can wait for one-two weeks more. HRs will always be pushing you - that's absolutely fine. Invest your time in prep to feel confident. There is no magic pill that will help you become prepared and there is no magic answer here that can help.

Thank you for the response.

I would totally advise you to call HR and tell them to postpone your interviews. If you don´t have enaugh preparation, your don´t stand a chance, unfortunately.

Hence, better to "fight" a bit with HR -for sure they are going to pressure you, it´s their job!- than losing your one-shot.

Hope it helps!

How much time do you have for you preparation? If you have never studied for cases I would say that you need at least 20 days to have a significant preparation. HR have their targets and sometimes they try to make pressure on candidates but you could try to push them back. Remember that if you fail the interview you could have a ban period before having the possibility to re-apply.

In order to prepare, if you have few time, I would suggest to read the Consentino's book (skipping the first chapters) and then to practice with other people, either candidates or coaches. Practicing with other people is the only way to quicly improve.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss further your possibilities.

Thanks Luca. I put a request for postponement. I'm expecting other interviews coming next month, so would start with what you've suggested. Appreciate your insight.

Feel free to text me if you want to discuss a detailed preparation plan. Best, Luca

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Title: learning from offline and online experiences: a hybrid adaptive operator selection framework.

Abstract: In many practical applications, usually, similar optimisation problems or scenarios repeatedly appear. Learning from previous problem-solving experiences can help adjust algorithm components of meta-heuristics, e.g., adaptively selecting promising search operators, to achieve better optimisation performance. However, those experiences obtained from previously solved problems, namely offline experiences, may sometimes provide misleading perceptions when solving a new problem, if the characteristics of previous problems and the new one are relatively different. Learning from online experiences obtained during the ongoing problem-solving process is more instructive but highly restricted by limited computational resources. This paper focuses on the effective combination of offline and online experiences. A novel hybrid framework that learns to dynamically and adaptively select promising search operators is proposed. Two adaptive operator selection modules with complementary paradigms cooperate in the framework to learn from offline and online experiences and make decisions. An adaptive decision policy is maintained to balance the use of those two modules in an online manner. Extensive experiments on 170 widely studied real-value benchmark optimisation problems and a benchmark set with 34 instances for combinatorial optimisation show that the proposed hybrid framework outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Ablation study verifies the effectiveness of each component of the framework.

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Quantum computing could threaten cybersecurity measures. Here’s why – and how tech firms are responding

Tech companies are taking measures to protect against quantum cyber attacks. Image:  REUTERS

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• Quantum computing could easily decode today’s cybersecurity measures.
• Tech companies are building new protections to withstand quantum cyber attacks.
• The World Economic Forum has designed a governance and principles framework for quantum computers.

Emerging technologies are posing significant threats to cybersecurity protocols that protect our digital communications and sensitive data. At present, the main focus is on AI and its potential to facilitate ever more sophisticated scams and amplify misinformation and disinformation .

A less immediate but equally concerning risk comes from an advanced technology known as quantum computing. This technology is still largely in the development stage, but rapid advances in recent years could see commercially viable machines become available in the near future.

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7 trends that could shape the future of cybersecurity in 2030, cybersecurity is too big a job for governments or business to handle alone, what does the dawn of quantum computing mean for blockchain, what is quantum computing.

The first thing to know is that quantum computers are nothing like your laptop, desktop or smartphone – they work in a very different way. Classical computers are driven by digital processors that can perform complex calculations at high speed. According to IBM , quantum computers use specialized hardware and algorithms that take advantage of the principles of quantum mechanics.

Pay attention at the back, this is where it gets interesting – and a bit weird. Quantum mechanics, according to Britannica , is a branch of science that deals with the behaviour of light and matter and the properties of molecules, atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons and other unimaginably tiny particles.

By leveraging this subatomic behaviour, says IBM, quantum computers are able to create “multidimensional computational spaces” which essentially means they can conduct billions of novel calculations at the same time. This enables them to solve much bigger problems at a speed that is difficult to comprehend.

For example, in 2019, a quantum computer built by Google took just over three minutes to solve a computation that would have taken the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to complete.

With that level of processing power available, it’s not difficult to see that quantum computers have the potential to bypass the encryption locks that currently protect the world’s communications and data.

To accelerate public-private responses to address the global cybersecurity skills and talent gap, the World Economic Forum Centre for Cybersecurity has launched the “Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap” initiative. The initiative builds on the Forum`s extensive research on the future of jobs and approaches towards reskilling across sectors.

The initiative brings together a multistakeholder group comprising industry leaders, government agencies, civil society and academia to create a strategic cybersecurity talent framework and devise actions to help individuals enter and thrive in the cybersecurity workforce.

Among other things, the initiative seeks to:

Raise awareness and share knowledge amongst C-suite executives and decision-makers about cybersecurity skills deficit and its economic and security implicationsDefine strategic approaches and processes that will help build sustainable cyber talent pipelines within organizations and across sectors and geographies

The Forum has also partnered with Salesforce , Fortinet and the Global Cyber Alliance to delivering free and globally accessible cybersecurity training through the Cybersecurity Learning Hub . This platform aims to democratize access to cybersecurity career paths and has already trained over 1.16M individuals spread across all continents.

World Economic Forum partner Absa, in collaboration with the Maharishi Institute, have also developed the Absa Cybersecurity Academy that is targeting some of the most disadvantaged groups in South Africa.

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How are tech companies responding to quantum cybersecurity risks?

With no real timescale for the arrival of quantum computers, tech companies are keen to get out in front of the potential challenges to current cybersecurity systems, before they become reality.

In an announcement on 21 February, 2024, Apple unveiled what it called, “a groundbreaking post-quantum cryptographic protocol ”. The company says its “PQ3” security system is designed to protect data sent over its iMessage platform. Apple claims its system offers protection against “even highly sophisticated quantum attacks”.

Apple says it’s introducing this post-quantum encryption now to protect against what is known as “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, where cybercriminals collect masses of data with the intention of decrypting it when the technology becomes available.

Google is also developing post-quantum security protocols and has already adopted them to protect the company’s internal communication. Google says that introducing new cryptography systems is in itself risky, citing examples of protocols that were cracked by conventional computers.

Protecting the global economy

The responsibility to protect essential systems from bad actors using quantum computers will extend far beyond tech companies.

In 2022, the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Deloitte, produced a framework to help organizations plan an orderly transition to a quantum-secure economy .

The research states: “Developing a coherent approach for transitioning to a quantum-secure economy requires a broad, collaborative and critical approach from a diverse and global community of business and cybersecurity leaders”.

It also addresses the need for a set of governance principles and values as a way of “building trust in the technology and to pre-empt possible risks before the technology is commercialized”.

These governance principles include commitments to cybersecurity, privacy and accountability.

Building on these principles, the Forum has now developed a toolkit designed to help organizations navigate the journey towards cybersecurity in an age of quantum computing. The toolkit urges leaders to factor in quantum-cyber protocols across corporate ecosystems and ensure there is collaboration in identifying risk and adopting protections.

There is little doubt that quantum computing has the potential to help us solve some of the greatest challenges we face. But without adequate controls in place, it could also undermine the safety and security of data and communications beyond anything we have seen before.

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