Kaiser Associates is a boutique strategy consulting firm based in Washington DC and London, with an office in Sao Paulo. The firm was founded in 1981 as a spin-off from Strategic Planning Associates by Michael Kaiser, currently President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. The firm is noted for its benchmarking, competitive analysis, voice of customer, commercial diligence work supporting investment decisions, and other externally driven strategic development work, developed in the 1980s through extensive work with IBM and General Motors and codified in a number of books including Developing Industry Strategies: A Practical Guide of Industry Analysis and Understanding the Competition: A Practical Guide of Competitive Analysis, and Beating the Competition: A Practical Guide to Benchmarking. Kaiser's notoriety for benchmarking was continued through the late 1980s and early 1990s under Robert "Bob" Fifer, a graduate of Harvard Business School whose primary focus was on helping corporate CEOs improve profits through novel methods. His insights were detailed in his book Double Your Profits In Six Months or Less and The Enlightened CEO: How to Succeed at the Toughest Job in Business. Fifer's departure from the firm marked a transition away from a focus on benchmarking and movement towards more traditional strategic consulting, including a wider array of strategic development and organizational management work competing with other traditional management consulting firms. Kaiser's consulting work has covered topics such as defining innovation metrics and impact on markets, its economic development practice, and its work developing onboarding and new-hire orientation programs for major corporations. Past Kaiser Associates' Senior Vice PresidentMark Stein and Vice President Lilith Christiansen, authored "Successful Onboarding: Strategies to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization", published by McGraw-Hill in July 2010. Mark Stein and Lilith Christiansen also published materials on the topic at the "Onboarding Margin" website.
