Thinking That Matters

The Gartner Group identified thought leadership marketing as a major business trend that has rapidly become an established field in marketing and a basis of competitive differentiation when well-informed buyers see little perceived differences between solution providers.*

Today, individuals and businesses need to embrace thought leadership—which is about coming up with new ways of thinking and reinventing—as a strategy for growth.

- Vip Vyas & Stuart Doughty

Fascinating, enthralling, and scintillating. These are some of the attributes we assign to individuals such as Ram Charan, Noam Chomsky, J K Rowling, and Stephen Hawkins; and organizations such as Apple, Google, NASA, and Khan Academy. Not only do these individuals and organizations benefit from ample media coverage and limelight, they are the go-to, top-of-mind people that others seek for inspiration, insight, information, and innovation.

They are the people whose books grab your attention at the airport bookstore; they are the organizations that ignite trends that ripple through industries and shape the future. Their ideas have a viral quality to them and TED is full of them.

But what does it take to become a thought leader and how can organizations develop internal thought leadership capabilities for superior value generation and performance?

Thought leadership in action

Being a recognized authority in a particular field is more than just making great presentations. Credible thought leaders are visible, intensely active, and ‘on the pulse’ around key topical issues emerging in their field of expertise. They use keynote presentations, conferences, high visibility platforms, and relevant pro-bono work as opportunities to amplify their ideas and create a strong, dedicated fan base eager to road-test their insights. Furthermore, they fortify their thinking by providing cutting-edge research that reveals surprising and sometimes counter-intuitive perspectives, new value-generating processes, and operative practices that accelerate the transition from idea to reality.