A Brief History of Strategy Consulting. The first strategy consulting firm was created in 1886 by Arthur Dehon Little, a chemist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other people came in afterwards and gradually institutionalized the field of management consulting. Although Arthur D. Little opened the way, he refused to follow the general trend when the field he had created started to grow – according to his opinion – on much too homogenous standards. His consulting company declined from then on. The pioneers’ dilemma Arthur D. Ultimately, his strategy didn’t work out very well: you can’t commit in solving matters that are unknown. Precisely because other consulting firms were unable to find appropriate solutions to their problems, the DuPont Company built a ground-breaking model, which was subsequently propagated by other consultants.
At a start, McKinsey wasn’t among the leaders. From the mid-1960s, consulting firms started to sell strategy, rather than structure.