With the acquisition of Lunar (late 2015), followed by Veryday and Carbon12 in 2016, McKinsey Design grows to 350 colleagues across 14 global studios. Our designers and experts work with clients to create groundbreaking products, services and experiences.

McKinsey opens an office in Nairobi, Kenya, its seventh in Africa, serving clients across public and private sectors. With a focus on hiring locally and an outreach to African universities, McKinsey works to develop the next generation of leaders.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Professor Clayton Christensen concludes that a thriving McKinsey is consciously "disrupting itself" by innovating to meet the rapidly evolving needs of clients.

Starting as an informal IT service to help clients and McKinsey teams create proofs of concept, Digital Labs grows into a thriving technology provider with more than 250 technologists. This capability helps clients put McKinsey recommendations into practice quickly by using agile development and rapid prototyping to build apps and other custom software.

McKinsey embraces the growing importance of not for profits, foundations, and other nongovernmental organizations by creating a practice dedicated to serving them. The Public & Social Sector Practice will come to focus on four areas: economic development, education, global public health, and social innovation.

At a time when only 2 out of 100 US senators are women, McKinsey establishes a global initiative aimed at creating career paths, support, and working environments to help women succeed. McKinsey Women will go on to become a thriving global network and powerful resource that provides formal and informal mentoring, training, and relationship-building opportunities.

Working with the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council and with manufacturers and retailers of all sizes, McKinsey conceives of a system that assigns a unique code to every product sold in the United States. The development of the agreed-upon scannable linear code is put out to bid, and IBM wins the contract.

The McKinsey Quarterly launches as a vehicle for reprints of articles by McKinsey consultants and external thought leaders. Soon the Quarterly starts to publish original articles and gains an international reputation.

Marvin Bower, who joined the firm in 1933 and later served as managing director, first articulates the consultant's obligation to advocate for what he or she believes to be true. After helping establish this obligation as part of the firm's core values, Bower will later express it clearly in his 1979 book, Perspective on McKinsey: "When discharged in a client situation, this responsibility [to dissent] is one of our most important controls of quality. When discharged within the firm—and it frequently is—it can strengthen our management substantially."

James O. McKinsey, a University of Chicago professor and expert on management accounting, establishes his eponymous consulting firm. He sets an enduring tone of independence and establishes a commitment to rigorous research and training.