Where contractors, too often, are doing work that could and should be carried out by full-time employees, consultancy is project-based, aimed at achieving defined objectives and in drawing on skills and expertise from elsewhere.
University of East London business psychology master's student Brayley Pearce, 43, funds his full-time study from his consultancy, KoolHeads.
"I haven't ruled that out, either as a full-time job or as a consultancy, although I may go back to Australia".
And I think universities would be wary of offering me anything full-time or permanent whilst my consultancy practice exists.
Then of course there are the creative agencies like brand consultancies, web agencies, design agencies and language consultancies that employ both full-time and freelance writers.
The UK office has a team of 10 full-time staff, with backgrounds ranging from management consultancy and product development to sustainability and chemistry.
Ishii runs Family Romance alongside a talent agency and a tech consultancy, employing about twenty full-time staff members, seven or eight of whom work exclusively for Family Romance.
Founded in 2008, originally as a computer vision and robotics engineering consultancy, Clearpath today employs 150 full-time in Kitchener.
Academic consultants work with external bodies on individual projects or offer specialised services whilst continuing as employees within their university (usually full-time, although universities are increasingly flexible should your consultancy work demand a bigger share of your time).
The exchange programme is aimed at encouraging more of that experimenting, said Geoffrey See, a Singaporean with degrees from the Wharton School and Yale, who started the programme in 2009 and quit his high-flying consultancy job at Bain and Co in 2012 to run it full-time.
