A few months ago, I was preparing some course material to address corporate strategy in the government contracting space. I wanted, as almost all business school professors do, to use a case study or two from any one of the famous business schools that produce them.
Out of tens of thousands of case studies, I could hardly find one done about a government contracting firm. When I asked a former Harvard Business school professor why this was so, he offered that he doubted that many professors producing these case studies thought that government contracting was a “real” market.
The view is more widely held than one might suspect – even in the national capital region. Many thoughtful members of Congress involved in acquisition policy, senior leaders in the executive branch, members of media, academia, and elsewhere that I’ve spoken with think that the GovCon market is really more of a political process than a “real” market characterized by competition, innovation, and transparency. Their prevailing view is that if a GovCon firm can figure out the political process and play that game better than the next guy, they win the contract, right? One monolithic buyer served by a few cartels in a closed cottage industry, right?
Keep reading this article at: http://washingtontechnology.com/Articles/2014/05/20/Insights-Hillen-GovCon-maturity.aspx?m=2&Page=2&p=1
