For the South African news website, see Thought LeaderThought Leader is a news website that is owned by the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian.- List of contributors :* Richard Calland and Lawson Naidoo * Alan Hammond* Albert Bredenhann* Alex Matthews...
Thought leader is a
buzzwordA buzzword is a idiom, usually a neologism, that is common to managerial, technical, administrative, and political work environments...
or article of
jargonJargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, or group. In other words, the term most often covers the language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest...
used to describe a futurist or
personA person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
who is recognized among
peerA peer group is a social group consisting of people who are equal in such respects as age, education or social class. Members of a particular peer group often have similar interests and backgrounds...
s and
mentorIn Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcumus and, in his old age, a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus left for the Trojan War he placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus, and of his palace. When Athena visited Telemachus she took the disguise of Mentor to hide herself from the suitors...
s for
innovativeAn innovation is a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter , contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an...
ideaIn the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
s and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled
insightInsight can be used with several related meanings:*a piece of information*the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively in Greek called noesis*an introspection...
s (
thinkletsThe "DIKW Hierarchy", also known variously as the "Wisdom Hierarchy", the "Knowledge Hierarchy", the "Information Hierarchy", and the "Knowledge Pyramid", refers loosely to a class of models for representing purported structural and/or functional relationships between data, information, knowledge,...
).
Thought leadership is an increasingly vital driver of business success. The term was first coined in 1994, by
Joel KurtzmanJoel Kurtzman is a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. His research focuses on globalization and its risks and has been published widely...
, editor-in-chief of the magazine,
Strategy & Business. The term was used to designate interview subjects for that magazine who had contributed new thoughts to business.
For the South African news website, see Thought LeaderThought Leader is a news website that is owned by the South African newspaper Mail & Guardian.- List of contributors :* Richard Calland and Lawson Naidoo * Alan Hammond* Albert Bredenhann* Alex Matthews...
Thought leader is a
buzzwordA buzzword is a idiom, usually a neologism, that is common to managerial, technical, administrative, and political work environments...
or article of
jargonJargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, or group. In other words, the term most often covers the language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest...
used to describe a futurist or
personA person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
who is recognized among
peerA peer group is a social group consisting of people who are equal in such respects as age, education or social class. Members of a particular peer group often have similar interests and backgrounds...
s and
mentorIn Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcumus and, in his old age, a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus left for the Trojan War he placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus, and of his palace. When Athena visited Telemachus she took the disguise of Mentor to hide herself from the suitors...
s for
innovativeAn innovation is a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter , contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an...
ideaIn the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
s and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled
insightInsight can be used with several related meanings:*a piece of information*the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively in Greek called noesis*an introspection...
s (
thinkletsThe "DIKW Hierarchy", also known variously as the "Wisdom Hierarchy", the "Knowledge Hierarchy", the "Information Hierarchy", and the "Knowledge Pyramid", refers loosely to a class of models for representing purported structural and/or functional relationships between data, information, knowledge,...
).
Thought leadership is an increasingly vital driver of business success. The term was first coined in 1994, by
Joel KurtzmanJoel Kurtzman is a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. His research focuses on globalization and its risks and has been published widely...
, editor-in-chief of the magazine,
Strategy & Business. The term was used to designate interview subjects for that magazine who had contributed new thoughts to business. Among the first "thought leaders," were British management thinker,
Charles HandyCharles Handy is an Irish author/philosopher specialising in organisational behaviour and management. Among the ideas he has advanced are the "portfolio worker" and the "Shamrock Organization"...
, who advanced the idea of a "portfolio worker" and the "Shamrock Organization", Stanford economist
Paul RomerPaul Michael Romer is an American economist, entrepreneur, and activist. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Development and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He is considered an expert on economic growth.Romer earned a B.S. in physics...
, Mitsubishi president, Minoru Makihara, and University of Michigan strategist, C.K. Prahalad, author of a number of well known works in corporate strategy including "The Core Competence of the Corporation" (Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1990); and his co-author,
Gary HamelDr. Gary P. Hamel is an American management expert. He is a founder of Strategos, an international management consulting firm based in Chicago.-Early life:...
, a professor at the London Business School. Since that time, the term has spread from business to other disciplines and has come to mean someone who enlivens old processes with new ideas. As a result, there are thought leaders in the sciences, humanities and even in government.
This term can also be applied to an applied research Center of Excellence, or
companyA business is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself...
- often a
small businessA small business is a business that is privately owned and operated, with a small number of employees and relatively low volume of sales. The legal definition of "small" often varies by country and industry, but is generally under 100 employees in the United States and under 50 employees in the...
that integrates
professional ethicsProfessional ethics concerns the moral issues that arise because of the specialist knowledge that professionals attain, and how the use of this knowledge should be governed when providing a service to the public.- Professional responsibility :...
with highly-effective
leadership developmentLeadership development refers to any activity that enhances the quality of leadership within an individual or organization. These activities have ranged from MBA style programs offered at university business schools to action learning, high-ropes courses and executive retreats.- Developing...
.
According to commentators such as Elise Bauer, a distinguishing characteristic of a
thought leader is "the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader
marketA market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things...
place in which it
operatesCommerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer. It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information, or money between two or more entities...
."
Some visions of thought leaders are "to fuel the evolution of leaders who choose to contribute to sustaining life (body, mind and spirit) in ourselves, our organizations, and our communities". With the belief "that leadership development is rooted in personal development & organizational transformation is rooted in individual transformation.
Thought leadership is also an emerging discipline in its own right. Our ability to understand its core practices, then to effectively apply them, are the keys to positioning ourselves and our companies for next level growth.
See also
- TLG Communications
TLG Communications is a Thought Leadership consultancy based in London, UK, specialising in corporate, consumer and political PR.The company was founded in August 2007 and claims to be the world's first Thought Leadership consultancy...
- Creative class
The Creative Class is a socioeconomic class that economist and social scientist Dr. Richard Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, identifies as a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial...
- Cognitive elite
The cognitive elite of a society, according to some social science researchers, are those having higher intelligence levels and thus better prospects for success in life. The development of a cognitive elite during the 20th century is presented in the book The Bell Curve written by Richard J....
- Anticipatory thinking (futures)
- Futures studies
- Robert L. Gernon
Robert Lawrence Gernon was born in Sabetha, Nemaha County, Kansas.He was a 1966 KU B-School major who studied law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas graduating in 1969....
- Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory.McLuhan is known for the...
- Strategic management
Strategic or institutional management is the conduct of drafting, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives...
- Faith Popcorn
Faith Popcorn, , is an author and founder and CEO of marketing consulting firm BrainReserve. Prior to founding her consultancy, Ms Popcorn was an advertising agency creative director. She is a graduate of New York University and New York’s High School of Performing Arts.- Phrases :Ms...
- Edwin W. Rawlings
General Edwin William Rawlings, USAF , A Milroy, Minnesota native, Rawlings graduated with an economics degree from Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota....
- Walter Roscoe Stubbs
- Paul White (journalist)
Paul W. White from Pittsburg, Kansas worked as director of news at CBS beginning in 1930. He was CBS' first news director. White worked as a newspaper journalist prior to beginning his radio broadcasting career with CBS...
- Irma Wyman
Irma M. Wyman was a systems thinking tutor and was the first female CIO of Honeywell.-Academic life:In 1945, Wyman was accepted into the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan...
- Etienne Wenger
Etienne C. Wenger is an educational theorist and practitioner, best known for his formulation of the theory of situated cognition and his more recent work in the field of communities of practice.Wenger achieved a B.S...
- World Future Society
The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S., founded in 1966. .The Society investigates how social, economic and technological developments are shaping the future...
- Mike Monteiro