Managing Director & Senior Partner
Paris
Nicolas Kachaner is a core member of the Strategy practice at Boston Consulting Group. He is BCG’s global topic leader for strategic planning and coleader of the firm’s family business topic. He is also an expert with BCG TURN, which helps clients deliver rapid, visible performance improvements in the short term while strengthening their organizations and positioning them to win in the future. He has been with BCG since 1988.
As a BCG Fellow from 2010 through 2017, Nicolas concentrated on business model innovation (BMI), particularly researching how leading companies can use BMI for strategic purposes. He also led a research program on the strategy and performance of large family businesses, which was published in the Harvard Business Review.
With his clients, Nicolas continues to develop novel partnership models. One of these is an approach called strategy cosourcing, in which BCG establishes a permanent team in the client’s strategy department in order to ensure seamless interaction, continuous transfer of knowledge, instantaneous access to BCG resources, and real-time allocation of the client’s and BCG’s resources to the most pressing strategic questions (such as M&A opportunities and how to respond to market events). In order to train the client’s strategy group within this model, Nicolas and his team have developed a “strategy academy” curriculum.
The COVID-19 crisis is causing people to pay more attention—not less—to urgent environmental issues such as climate change.
Sometimes the shortest distance between today’s offerings and business models and tomorrow’s innovations isn’t a straight line.
As critical freshwater shortages grow worldwide, companies and financial investors can generate substantial returns while supporting environmental and social goals by funding sustainable projects.
With the right design and structure, a family office can be a powerful tool for meeting the financial needs of the wealthy.
Leading companies are improving upon their traditional strategy-setting processes by adding something much more dynamic and agile. We call it always-on strategy.
Now more than ever, companies need to devote time to strategy. But far too many strategic-planning processes fall short. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Planning for succession starts with recognizing that it will be one of the most complicated transitions experienced by a family business. BCG has identified ten principles to guide the process and enable the business to thrive into the future.
A BCG survey of 2,687 large companies found that asset-light models deliver stronger financial results—especially if used with “smart controls” that improve coordination and knowledge sharing.