Reinventing the Wheel

In a discussion with Steve Gunby, head of BCG North America, we addressed a client situation where they just wanted us to "provide the answer" from similar work in other industries -- the client didn't want us to "reinvent the wheel." Steve's response was quite good: You're right, we don't want to reinvent the wheel, so there is some basic structure we'll use from the other work, BUT we don't know what type of wheel we're trying to create for you...bicycle, car or airplane...so we must solve your specific problem.