Simon Roberts shuts down Ideas Bazaar, his small UK user research consultancy. He’s off to a job with Intel, no doubt to do amazing things. Interesting to read the above-linked entry (for me, at least) because it describes life in a situation not unlike my own, a very small consulting business. Lots of detail in the long post, including lessons learned (headlines only here):

• That a good accountant is great asset.
  
• Working with other small business usually works really well.
  
• That in this type of business you have to give some stuff away.
  
• That there is a lots of totally crap market, strategic, creative or whatever sort of research out there and loads of companies seem content to put up with it.
  
• That you don’t have to have to have a anthropology degree (or even a social science background) to be an ‘ethnographer’ or even an ‘anthropologist’ anymore.
  
• That you can say “no” to companies that you don’t want to work with if you don’t like what they stand for or what they do.
  
• That these sort of businesses don’t scale very easily
  
• That if you run a blog you should be more outspoken, more often and put more “editorial” or opinion on it.