Hi Anon,
Responding to your last comment on whether "generalist partners" will own the client relationships in the future
My view on it is "yes" in medium term, perhaps it will change in the long term (after all, everything is changing!) but I am not sure. Here's why I think that:
1. Clients will still want answers to holistic strategic questions and "generalist"** partners can help coordinate to provide that - and they are highly incentivised to do so! Exceptional data science can enable key insights or parts of the answer, but often the answer could be something very holistic covering strategy, how to operationalize the strategy into a program, and actual implementation help. The partner will want to help the client through every step of this journey and a "generalist" skillset is perhaps better positioned.
**Also wanted to add some perspective on "generalist" partners. I wanted to use your language here in this question but I think partners are not that "generalist". At the partner level, there is industry and functional expertise (at least from a consultant point of view). Hence, whilst a partner may not know as much about detailed data science, they have very good understanding at the business problem level and which capabilities are required to solve those problems.
2. Partnership structure - in many markets, there are specific allocations of client relationships to specific partners. These are obviously taken by business-oriented partners (who can cover the range of support needs for this client or at least get access to the support required), hence any high functionally-oriented "data science" partners will have to find their role in these structures.
(edited)