KPMG moves several hundred staff into an incubator that sits outside its three service lines

Several hundred people is a small group in a firm of roughly 276,000 ^[7]. Even at 1,000 staff, CT&I would be about 0.36% of headcount ^[1]. A unit that size can work to its own rules without asking the rest of KPMG to change how it is run. At the top of the firm, a partnership typically votes on major changes. Beneath it sit layers of accountants, consultants and lawyers serving different industries and geographies ^[8].

Todd Lohr, the vice chair who leads the unit, described it as "like a Silicon Valley incubator within the walls of KPMG" ^[4]. His account of the old approach is the frankest part of the announcement. "It's not that we hadn't focused on innovation," Lohr said. "It's just we did it within the current course and speed of our business," a business in which, Business Insider reported, client service and the day job always come first ^[9]. So what he admits to is a problem of pace. The innovation work happened, but at the speed of the day job. He traced the push for more speed to the public launch of ChatGPT almost four years ago ^[16]. Leadership has also been rotating its management committee meeting between New York and the West Coast every six weeks to meet technology companies and startups ^[15].

The board-deck version is a firm that keeps its brand, clients and specialists and adds startup speed. Lohr pitched it against AI-powered consulting startups that bet they can do strategy work faster and more cheaply than a traditional team of consultants ^[13]. "Shame on us if we allow a startup that doesn't have a brand, or access to clients, or access to the knowledge and expertise that we have to disrupt us," he said ^[14]. That version leaves out the question of authority. The report places the unit inside KPMG's risk and governance framework ^[10] but does not say who approves CT&I's contracts, which firm-wide sign-offs it skips, or whether the partnership voted to create it.

The rotation plan addresses a second problem. Senior figures who left traditional consulting firms for startups or smaller firms told Business Insider they wanted a faster pace, better promotion opportunities and more influence over how their firms operate ^[12]. A founder-style stint offers something on pace and influence. Promotion is harder to offer from a unit that people are designed to leave, because rotated staff go back into the business afterwards ^[11].

I think the evidence supports the idea that KPMG is testing whether it can carve out speed without splitting in two, but only just. It has separated a small group from its three service lines and kept two ties to the core: the risk and governance framework, and the people it sends back ^[10][11]. Those ties hold the firm together. They are also the two routes by which the service lines' pace could reach the unit. Speed has become "paramount" to the firm, Lohr said ^[6].