If you’re in the technology industry, or any other industry for that matter, you know that thought leadership has long been an approach for companies to differentiate themselves from their competition.
It’s a way to showcase your people and their collective ideas, so that customers have confidence that your products and services – backed by your unique insights and approaches – can provide a distinct advantage over the rest of the pack.
In this regard it serves as a powerful relationship builder, but beyond an interesting idea or theory, thought leadership must also be supported by tangible approaches and techniques so that it can be implemented effectively in the real world.
In the management consulting arena, thought leadership is paramount because the “product” these organizations offer really comes down to the collective brain power of their associates.
Take digital transformation for example. The thought leadership required here comes down to proven, workable techniques for moving organizations forward in their transformation agendas. This requires more than platitudes, but concrete, proven approaches that help you achieve real business value.
One of the reasons I believe the thought leadership industry is ready for digital disruption is because it has all the typical symptoms of a legacy industry ripe for change:
- It’s highly fragmented and often closed to most outsiders meaning thought leaders must work tirelessly across numerous silos with artificial barriers to entry
- Opportunities for emerging thought leaders to rapidly advance their impact and audience are limited since opportunities and contacts are mostly hidden from view
- There’s currently no way to measure thought leadership and it’s often confused with influence, public speaking or other partial measures
The fact is that thought leaders typically wear many hats. They’re academics, authors, entrepreneurs, inventors, influencers and speakers – and any combination thereof. These various roles all represent avenues for thought leaders to reach their target audience and positively impact the world through their ideas.
Today’s challenge is that thought leaders must work across too many silos, too many intermediaries, and too many artificial barriers to practice their art and spread the word. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Thinkers360 was founded to help solve these issues. It’s aimed at both established and emerging thought leaders and takes a platform business model approach – much like Airbnb and Uber – to put thought leaders at the center and bring the industry ecosystem to you.
The invitation-only model means that we look for leading authorities in their fields, but we’re also flexible and eager to work with up and coming stars. You might be a book author wishing to grow your social media influence, or a social media influencer wishing to move more into authoring and public speaking. As part of our business model, we’ve re-drawn the industry boundaries so that you can practice all aspects of your craft via our platform and showcase your “collected works” to your audience.
We’re also re-defining how thought leadership is measured and how thought leaders can be authoritatively ranked among their peers in various thought leadership domains and topic areas. Our patent-pending algorithm looks at your thought leadership across all dimensions including your audience and impact as an author, influencer, speaker and more.
Our business model is focused on tasks so that you can make progress on a daily basis. On the platform, you can share and discover thought leadership opportunities such as authoring, media and speaking engagements. You can showcase your “collected works” to others via a rich profile that provides a 360-degree view of your full portfolio. You can showcase your thought leadership ranking and monitor your progress over time. You can connect and collaborate with the exclusive Thinkers360 community and well as with an extended ecosystem of companies, agencies and service providers.
We invite you to sign up to apply for the beta program and help us shape our upcoming platform and ecosystem.
If you’re a company or agency contracting with thought leaders, a service provider offering your unique services to thought leaders, or a thought-leading brand identifying, cultivating and managing your internal thought leaders, we welcome you to come and join us at Thinkers360 as well!