Consultancies share a lot of market perspectives freely on their websites. The goal is of course to build credibility by demonstrating industry knowledlge, taking their right share of attention vs their competitors, and act as teasers for additional client discussions.
A few of these reports are genuinely interesting and insightful, e.g. the pieces from the McKinsey Global Institute tend to be insightful and of high quality. However most publications are disappointing, half-backed stories with a few approximate numbers combined with take-aways from a single client project (incidently this help the authors get promoted).
Among the most useless reports are the market perspectives taunting “trillions dollar opportunities”. These days GenAI is of course the latest such opportunity, but a couple of years ago automation was the all the rage (remember those Robotic Process Automation that were supposed to remove 30% of the workforce? A multi-trillion market for sure).
Now, GenAI will likely turn into a trillion dollar market, that is not the point. The point is that a trillion dollar market is a number that is non-informative and non-actionable (also: any global industry represents a trillion dollar market).
Large numbers are also used to hide that no one - especially consultants - have any ideas how the market or technology will evolve. It’s just a way of saying “we think it’s going to be big, so you should look at this”.
“If the dollar estimates seem laughably, incomprehensibly high, it means using money as a metric is, if not precisely wrong, at least desperately incomplete.” Deb Chabra, How Infrastructure Works.
Consultants love numbers. It makes them look more serious and sophisticated. They also (wrongly) believe that large numbers will impress clients and move them to act. When Deb Chabra asked an industry expert to estimate the entire value of the GPS market, she declined to answer, saying only it was in the trillions, “meaningless for anyone but a scholar”.
So my rule of thumb is: As soon as you see a number in the trillions, stop reading. The only insights you will get from reading further is that a new trend or tech has entered the market (which you likely already knew) and that everyone believes (but don’t really know) that it’s going to be the future.
