ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of commercial knowledge-intensive services (KIS) in the UK since the 1970s, as elsewhere, reflects the changing needs of the rest of the economy, in the private and the public sectors. The response of the KIS sector itself has also been influential, developing specialized technical and management consultancies, and offering legal, financial, human resources, real estate, marketing and much other expertise. As we shall see, these demand trends and emerging patterns of KIS supply have generally been well documented in recent years. The operational basis for KIS success, however, is less well documented, although it is now attracting more commercial and academic interest. The more general impacts of their growing use, however, especially on business development and innovation, have hardly been explored, particularly in relation to the parallel activities of other agencies, including clients.
