As the sun sets on the semester, I can’t help but reflect on how formative this consulting experience has been. Challenges are an inherent part of any consulting process. In working with our VC client to improve impact reporting from their portfolio companies in nascent industries, difficulties abounded. Yet, I realized these challenges don’t have to be roadblocks, but rather invitations to innovate, learn new skills, cultivate new knowledge and a chance to take stock of my own strengths and further opportunities for growth.
Early on, I gained an appreciation for the difficulties VCs face in the impact investing arena and the importance of creative thinking. Not only are they relying on elusive private market data, but investing in and growing businesses in nascent industries with emerging technologies truly poses an uphill battle. Lacking historical benchmarks, evaluating unproven business models, and forecasting a foggy path for technology adoption, assessing market opportunity becomes an art rather than a science. Confronted with these new challenges shrouded in nebulous contexts, I’ve become more comfortable operating in ambiguity and trying to back into problems in innovative ways.
Sometimes problems cloaked in complexity have simple solutions. Filtering out the noise can be the difficulty, but as a consultant, that’s your job. At the outset of the project, I felt pressure to have a clear handle on the problem. Yet, throughout the iterative process of defining and redefining the challenges our client faced, possible solutions and our possible recommendations crystallized. It reinforced the importance of harvesting data from diverse streams and truly listening to the song beneath the words when engaging in client meetings. Thus, acquiring accurate and comprehensive data became a puzzle-solving exercise, pushing me to think creatively, test my resourcefulness, and helped me rethink what it means to uncover valuable insights.
All in all, I found this course a valuable addition to my SIPA career. I have no doubt that the opportunity to take a project from start to finish in this burgeoning space will prove pivotal for not only landing a job to begin my career but will be a foundational guiding star as I embark on project-based work down the road.