Industry Management consulting Headquarters Paris, France Founded 1886 | Website www.adl.com Number of employees 1,000 Type Privately held company | |
Key people Ignacio Garcia Alves, Global CEO Products Management consulting services CEO Ignacio García Alves (Jan 2012–) Founders Arthur Dehon Little, Roger Griffin Profiles | ||
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Arthur D. Little is an international management consulting firm originally headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and formally incorporated by that name in 1909 by Arthur Dehon Little, an MIT chemist who had discovered acetate. Arthur D. Little pioneered the concept of contracted professional services. The company played key roles in the development of business strategy, operations research, the word processor, the first synthetic penicillin, LexisNexis, and NASDAQ. Today the company is a multi-national management consulting firm operating as a partnership.
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Early history
The roots of the company were started in 1886 by Arthur Dehon Little, an MIT chemist, and co-worker Roger B. Griffin (Russell B. Griffin), another chemist and a graduate of the University of Vermont who had met when they both worked for Richmond Paper Company. Their new company, Little & Griffin, was located in Boston where MIT was also located. Griffin and Little prepared a manuscript for The Chemistry of Paper-making which was for many years an authoritative text in the area. The book had not been entirely finished when Griffin was killed in a laboratory accident in 1893.
Little, who had studied Chemistry at MIT, collaborated with MIT and William Hultz Walker of the MIT Chemistry department, forming a partnership, Little & Walker, which lasted from 1900 to 1905, while both MIT and Little's company were still located in Boston. The partnership dissolved in 1905 when Walker dedicated his full-time to being in charge of the new Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry at MIT.
Little continued on his own and formally incorporated the company, Arthur D. Little (ADL), in 1909. He conducted analytical studies, the precursor of the consulting studies for which the firm would later become famous. He also taught papermaking at MIT from 1893 to 1916.
In 1916 ADL was commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway to do a survey of Canada's natural resources. In 1917, the company moved to a building of its own, the Arthur D. Little Inc., Building, at 30 Memorial Drive on the Charles River next to the campus of MIT which had moved to Cambridge from Boston in 1916. In November 1953, ADL opened a 40 acre site for their Acorn Park labs in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Arlington, Massachusetts, which is about 6 miles (10 km) from MIT. The Memorial Drive Trust, a tax-exempt retirement trust for the benefit of its employees was set up.
In 1981, ADL produced the European Commission's first white paper on telecommunications deregulation, having completed the first worldwide telecommunications database on phones installed, markets, technical trends, services and regulatory information. It also helped privatize British Rail, generally regarded as one of the most complex privatization exercises in the world.
After 2001
By 2001, Arthur D. Little reached its peak. A new management team had mismanaged the company's core business, engaged in manipulation of the Memorial Drive Trust, and attempted a sale of the technology and product development business. The ADL board of trustees replaced this management team, but the damage had been done, and Arthur D. Little filed chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002. At an auction in 2002, Paris-based Altran Technologies bought the Arthur D. Little brand name for of the non-U.S. offices.
Under Altran's ownership, Arthur D. Little rebuilt its core practices in oil and gas, telecommunications, automotive and manufacturing and chemicals and reopened its US offices. Arthur D. Little continues to be active and recognized for its expertise in areas combining aspects of technology, innovation, and strategy.
Current partnership organisation
A group of Partners prepared a management buyout from the Altran group in 2011. The MBO was completed on 30 December 2011 with the majority of ADL Directors becoming Partners and Shareholders - a small number of Principals as well as the CFO and COO are also shareholders. The firm is led by the elected global CEO, Ignacio Garcia-Alves, who was also the leader of the MBO team. Currently the firm operates with an elected Board, an elected Compensation Committee, an elected Partnership Committee, and an elected Audit Committee. Since the MBO, ADL has opened several new offices in the US, as well as offices in Turkey, Norway, Buenos Aires, and Singapore.
Rankings
Arthur D. Little was rated #9 and #6 in Vault's 2016 Consulting rankings for Europe and Asia respectively.
Publications
Arthur D. Little publishes a number of regular global studies including:
Career education
The Arthur D. Little Career Education Program Arthur D. Little School of Management was spun off and became Hult International Business School.
Controversy
In 1987, ADL claimed that sabotage was likely the cause of the Bhopal disaster, which resulted in the death of thousands. ADL was paid by Union Carbide, the company that owned the chemical plant responsible for the chemical disaster. Analysis by Arthur D. Little argues that the Negligence argument was impossible for several tangible reasons.
In 2001, ADL wrote a Philip Morris-funded report saying that smoking can help Czech economy: Public Finance Balance of Smoking in the Czech Republic.