What was strategy consulting at PwC like before Strategy& came about?

Strategy Consulting at PwC was mostly done by PwC Management Consultants. Management consulting is still existing and is providing management consulting services on the lower end with occasional strategy stints.

PwC MC hired separately, so they were paying different salaries and did not pool with other Advisory practices. I have no idea about their competitivenes but I guess it wasn't as strong as S&O.

Strategy& is the top-level management consulting company at PwC but not the direct successor of PwC MC.

I don't know why this is of interest, but I know the answer, so I'll share. (I can only speak to PwC in the US; PwC is a global network of firms, not one global firm, so other countries had different trajectories. E.g. my understanding is that in the UK, PwC's Strategy practice was viewed on par with MBB.)

History and evolution After PwC sold its consulting practice to IBM (I don't remember when exactly that was - it was sometime between 2000 and 2008), its only real strategy practice was TS (Transaction Services) Strategy, which focused on doing commercial due diligence for acquisitions and was ~30 people, with one Partner. As the deal market died down in the wake of the financial crisis, TS Strategy leveraged the same core skillset / approach to work on organic growth (market entry) strategy projects across industries, and moved into the broader Advisory (Consulting) practice in 2009. (It has fluctuated between being part of Management Consulting within Advisory and its own horizontal within Advisory, if I recall correctly.)

At that point, it existed as kind of a bubble within the Firm. Over the next several years, it split into a Health Industries and "Products and Services Industries" (i.e., Other) bucket, and the latter split off Financial Services as well. It continued to focus mainly on market entry / commercial due diligence, with some more operational strategy being added. The acquisitions of PRTM and Diamond brought in additional pockets of growth strategy and operational strategy practitioners, with those getting folded into the core PwC Strategy practices as they were integrated.

Also, were undergrads and MBAs previously hired directly or specifically into strategy (this is now the case with S&) or were they simply part of a general MC/Advisory pool? Through ~2011 (could have the date slightly off), undergrads and MBAs were hired directly / specifically into Strategy, focused on a few target schools which accounted for most of the membership within those groups (Yale and Cornell were big, as was, to a lesser extent, Columbia Business School). Over time, Advisory fluctuated between trying to take a hybrid approach (e.g. putting first round interviewees through a common Advisory interview which did not do an effective job of screening for Strategy-specific skills/aptitude) and taking a more targeted approach.

Was strategy at PwC anywhere close to Deloitte S&O in terms of strength, quality, reputation/prestige, scale etc. before S&? Probably 60%+ of PwC Strategy's projects were for F500 or other blue chip clients, and did true growth strategy work. In 2009, I believe (though can't be sure) that PwC Strategy had a better representation of premier clients and growth strategy/CDD work than Deloitte S&O, though this changed over time.