The AI Business Council

Our true AI journey started with a complete business reboot. What if a small consultancy had the chance to build a business with AI at the centre, representing our potential clients?

Not as a one-off or bolt-on solution, but as an integrated powerhouse, defining everything from offerings, the brand, Go-to-Market and constant learning? And at the same time, making us invest the time needed to truly capture the potential of a technology claiming to have a profound impact on both society and business?

For over two decades, we've navigated the trenches of the consultancy industry, witnessing technological shifts – each presented as the next big thing, often leaving businesses still grappling with the human element.

Now, with AI, the narrative is familiar, yet the potential depth and financial impact completely different. This made us push the question: How can AI genuinely elevate consulting at its core, allowing us to truly understand and continue to serve the decision-makers shaping business today and tomorrow?

This led to our Client in the Loop philosophy – an evolution of the traditional AI 'Human in the Loop' concept, where the Clients are represented by fictional AI-generated archetypes of our ideal clients. By applying the loop, we are able to leverage data and insights far beyond our own human capability and experience. With each interaction, we have systematically used the insights to help define a consultancy and brand the archetypes would consider in 2025 and beyond.

But one crucial question remained: To fully trust the output and insights, how could we get to a more human centered user interface?

The first hurdle with AI wasn't the data; it was the interface itself. We found endless prompting, tweaking and typing often led us back to the same problem: outputs that felt like just another echo of what countless other consultants produce. The breakthrough came when we shifted entirely to Voice interaction as our primary input, guided by a system for dialogue and output – our 'Client in the Loop' philosophy in action.

Like a live focus group, this lets us truly challenge the AI's responses and dive deeper. Crucially, this rich, interactive dialogue also helps us fight hallucination. Our own domain knowledge, combined with the nuances of voice and tonality, means we can quickly spot inaccuracies and guide the conversation back on track.

The Business Council archetypes aren't just theoretical models. They represent deep domain expertise and unique personalities, all inspired by our own professional experience. It's a tough crowd to impress: their synthetic knowledge, minimizing human biases, comes from thousands of real-world consultancy relationships and pitches – insights that cut through the noise of consultants just pushing the 'latest shiny solution".

Our Council is far from an echo chamber and has gradually become a true sparring partner. Through Voice interaction and dynamic role-play, we've found an almost natural way to communicate, debate and train.

This collaborative approach ensures our human-driven insights are always challenged and refined. The Council helps us uncover new perspectives, rooted in their deep individual domain knowledge. Once battle-tested our partnership then helps you amplify strategy into execution.

Since the spring of 2025, we have with the Council spent hundreds of hours applying our Client-in-the-Loop concept. The Voice interaction made us confident enough that by combining a structured approach, using the making of Bearing 45 as the case, we would also be able to create a model for future simulations.

So what did we gain, having the output from the Council treated as the voice of the market? The key has been the Guiding Pillars, each a strategic principle based on the individual iterations with each of the archetypes. The Pillars, together with more detailed output, have then had a great impact and defined our brand fundamentals, service portfolio, delivery models and how we go to market.