Consulting Services

When it comes to Strategic Management Consulting, we advise a client’s top management on critical business issues of strategic importance. For example: whether it is beneficial to engage in another business venture, whether to invest in a joint project, or whether a business partner has the right performance to maintain engagement. The breadth of the consulting assignment here is restricted to a client’s top management personnel.

When we provide your business with Industry Association Consulting, we help you set up and expand an industry or trade association in support of your business interests, help make this association group grow sustainably, and establish the necessary statutes and bylaws. We can also advise your business management on how to strategically and tactically manage issues with the help of the right maneuvers– custom to the environment of the situation­– such as agenda setting, taking leadership positions in working groups, writing position papers, organizing events, and publishing general interest brochures. This advice could extend beyond your business, our immediate client, to also support the association being founded or improved upon. Other than top management, advice may be given to business representatives from associations on how to use the association to the business’s benefit. While this advice still stays within the industry, it can expand widely to engage your stakeholders and industry players.

Sometimes, especially when introducing new business concepts that require direct engagement with top decision-makers in government, it may be best to accompany industry association work with a more direct form of engagement– a public-private initiative, which brings together top management of the major industry companies with ministers or their deputies in the relevant governmental ministries. In this case, beyond the industry affected, consulting services can go towards much broader engagements between industry players and government officials, in a typically national initiative.

Sometimes a project or issue expands beyond industry players, forming a complex web of stakeholders. These issues might involve the academic or technology communities, and it’s always important to consult with related civil-society organizations to ensure equitable outcomes. In these cases, multi-stakeholder partnerships or initiatives are necessary.

Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Consulting can take place on a national or international level. In this area of consulting, a high level of international experience and diplomacy is required to ensure that respective business interests are adequately brought into joint statements. Our consulting services in this area can go beyond mere advice– as they would in the above cases– to also serve as a direct representation of your business’s interests in such a multi-stakeholder initiative, ensuring that your goals and objectives are advocated for.

You can trust Arete Publica Associates Founder and CEO, Peter Hellmonds, to keep your business’s best interests in mind. He has over 20 years of experience working in various business areas, including industry associations, initiatives between public and private sectors, and multi-stakeholder initiatives on an international scale. 

Peter has advised top management on a range of issues– he’s worked with the German IT and Telecoms industry association BITKOM and with the public-private ICT Initiative D21 in Germany, where he also served as chairman of the German Broadband Initiative. He has over 15 years experience working for and with the International Chamber of Commerce, where he continues to be a member in their Digital Economy Commission and in the Anti-Corruption and Responsible Business Commission.

Peter has worked as an adviser on the German UNESCO Commission, and was a member of the Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF). In addition, he has worked on an international scale as adviser to the CEO in the Digital Opportunities Task Force of the G8 and in the United Nations ICT Task Force, as well as a member of the Strategy Council of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Peter has also been a member of the Internet Society since 1993. He was a board member of the high-IQ association Mensa, both in Germany and as a Director on the Executive Committee of Mensa International.