Thought leader

Not to be confused with Thought Leader, the South African news website.

A thought leader is an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its first citation for the phrase an 1887 description of Henry Ward Beecher as "one of the great thought-leaders in America." But it was revived or reinvented by marketers in the 1980s; in a 1990 article in the Wall Street Journal Marketing section, Patrick Reilly used the term "thought leader publications" to refer to such magazines as Harper's.[2]

Some have suggested that the term has negative connotations, owing to its similarity with dystopian elements found in George Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four which introduced the coinages thoughtcrime and thought police.[3]

The term is sometimes used to characterize leaders of service clubs, officers of veterans' organizations, of civic organizations, of women's clubs, lodges, regional officials and insurance executives.[4][5]

Thought leadership is often used as a way of increasing or creating demand for a product or service. High tech firms often publish white papers with analyses of the economic benefits of their products as a form of marketing. These are distinct from technical white papers. Consulting firms frequently publish house reports, e.g. The McKinsey Quarterly,[6] A.T. Kearney Executive Agenda,[7] Booz & Co Strategy and Business[8] (now being acquired by PriceWaterhouseCoopers), or Deloitte Review [9] where they publish the results of research, new management models and examples of the use of consulting methodologies.[10]

New York Times' columnist David Brooks mocked the lifecycle of the role in a satirical column entitled "The Thought Leader," published in December 2013.[11]

See also

Look up thought leader in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ↑ "What Is A Thought Leader?". Forbes. 2012-03-16. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  2. ↑ Patrick Reilly, "'Thought' Magazines Weather Ad Storms." Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 1990.
  3. ↑ Cheryl Pass "‘Thought Leaders’: Orwell’s 1984 Moves To The 21st Century", Freedom Outpost, October 11, 2012
  4. ↑ Carey McWilliams (1951) "Government by Whitaker and Baxter II", The Nation, page 367, April 21
  5. ↑ Scott Cutlip (1994) The Unseen Power, page 607
  6. ↑ "McKinsey Quarterly | McKinsey & Company". Mckinsey.com. 2013-10-06. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  7. ↑ "Executive Agenda ® - A.T. Kearney". Atkearney.com. 2011-03-11. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  8. ↑ Ludwig, Helmuth (2014-02-11). "strategy+business: international business strategy news articles and award-winning analysis". Strategy-business.com. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  9. ↑ "Deloitte Review - A semiannual publication for business leaders". Deloitte.com. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  10. ↑ http://www.eclicktick.com/AgileDemandCreation.docx
  11. ↑ David Brooks, "The Thought Leader", The New York Times, December 17, 2013.

Further reading