Everybody's talkin' 'bout thought leadership ...
While the notion of being a thought leader is readily embraced by most companies (who doesn't want to be one?), you have to play it right or risk undermining your organization's credibility.
10 things you need to know:
- The starting point? The word "thought." Begin by creating a big picture idea with relevance to many. Look outward, not inward. The idea isn't myopically focused; it has appeal to others outside your company. And while it doesn't have to appeal to a vast universe, it must appeal to a market or a segment of the market. Pervasive thought leadership platforms cleverly rise above (A) a company, (B) its products, (C) its technologies, and (D) its services. This is definitely the hard part.
- Companies create thought leadership ideas to forge a differentiated position for themselves. By developing big concepts, the thought leadership company creates competitive advantage. How? Because the marketplace perceives it as a mover and shaker: someone shaping the agenda vs. responding to it. Great thought leadership campaigns give their creators an offensive vs. defensive position. And get them noticed.
- An effective thought leadership idea has forward appeal. It's not a rehash of where things have been, it's a brilliant definition of how things should be and where they should be headed. It's a desired state with emphasis on benefits.
- Effective thought leadership ideas are embraced (sometimes readily) by others. The ideas are so strong and compelling, that direct competitors either overtly or indirectly respond to – and shape themselves around - the idea. In some instances, competitors adopt the thought leadership idea but morph it with their own language.
- Great thought leadership lives a long life ... years not days. It isn't intended to be a short lived advertising tagline or a bumper sticker ... it's a concept that becomes a definitional stake-in-the-ground for high-level corporate messaging. Example #1: Siebel's invention of customer relationship management (CRM). You can argue the broken promise aspect of CRM, but years after its invention, it is still the most used category definition and competitors like PeopleSoft continue to use the language.
- Example # 2: Red Hat. This company created a high-level thought leadership position when it evangelized open source software. In the early days, it gained little economically, but in the end, Red Hat was so tightly aligned with the concept it became the defacto leader in this "free software" market space. This is an excellent example of an initially unknown start-up company using thought leadership to set the agenda and align itself with a big idea with broad yet differentiating appeal.
- Example #3: IBM and its On Demand Business campaign. This thought leadership concept is at the opposite end of the Red Hat spectrum. Here you've got one of tech's biggest gorillas throwing lavish amounts of money in a never-ending integrated marketing campaign that (A) appeals to a well defined slice of tech-land yet (B) plays shrewdly to its own strengths.
- The best thought leadership ideas are thought provoking, challenge the marketplace and are perceived as newsworthy by the media. Example #4: Sun Microsystems' classic "The Network is the Computer" was one of the best. While Sun has fallen on challenging days, this particular thought leadership idea redefined the competitive technology landscape for over a decade.
- Now for the second word, the "leadership" part. Great thought leaders don't sit back and say, "Give me a call when you want to talk about this idea." They are bold, aggressive and in-your-face. They push the ball up the floor and take their message out with great consistency. Cisco has a regular "thought leadership summit" (founded by The Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business and Cisco). PeopleSoft has an annual thought leadership summit that attracts thousands of executives. You don't want to create an exciting idea and let it sit, you want it to proliferate.
- There is – for the bold and socially minded - an even higher state of thought leadership. Companies can rise above their own market niches (and self interests) by making their world a better place to live. Cases in point: PNC Financial Services Group's "Grow up Great" program is a comprehensive corporate commitment to improving school readiness for pre five-year old children. And ConAgra Food's "Feeding Children Better" thought leadership program attacks the issue of child hunger in the U.S. Both are clients of Cone Communications, a cause branding leader. The PNC campaign is really out-of-the-box for a financial services company; the ConAgra program is in their business zone, but is still positioned credibly at a high societal benefit level.
