In this week’s thought leadership roundup, we take a look at breaking down open innovation barriers, going beyond the mere notion of thought leadership, and some advice from a revered thought leader and PR expert.
Innovate or Die! Reducing Barriers to Open Innovation
From BDaily Business News:
“The increase in the use of the internet to identify, select and purchase products and services is resulting in greater competition and a consequent reduction in profit margins. These diminishing returns would appear to be creating commodity markets where all prices are visible with the result that there is a convergence in the prices of providers.
Just because something worked successfully in the past is no guarantee that it will be successful in the future and there are plenty of competitors who are out to eat your breakfast! So what can be done to earn an honest return on business investment and improve business performance? The short answer is open innovation, but how should this be done?
The twentieth-century model of innovation was based around firms investing significant sums in building R&D capabilities, recruiting the most intelligent people, getting the innovation to market first, and controlling intellectual property. It worked relatively successfully, but things are very different now in the twenty-first century when people can compare prices or seek out new knowledge and ways of operating.”
Our take: Open innovation may not be an altogether new approach, but it is one that many enterprise companies are hesitant to try — namely, because it requires high-level collaboration, frequent and direct communication, and a lot of transparency with entities that aren’t necessarily internal. But, as old tactics dry up and die out, and internal resources are exhausted, organizations with nowhere else to turn will be forced to look outside of their own walls for inspiration and best practices. This is much more than just assessing market leaders and mimicking moves that have worked for them; instead, it’s about analyzing third parties that can support or enhance existing business, and working with them directly to inject innovation into the company at the fundamental level.
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Leading Thoughts or Losing Customers? Going Beyond Thought Leadership
From Go Creative Go:
“A mistake I see a lot of businesses make online is trying to position themselves as THE expert in their field. The idea of thought leadership gets passed around a lot, and people often pursue the idea of being famous over being effective.
Positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry is nice, but it’s not a great goal in itself. It’s easy to get caught up in the popularity contest of having more Twitter followers and a huge LinkedIn network. But how much do those things actually affect your bottom line?
If you’re after follower numbers alone, you may as well be throwing your business cards at the side of a bus. Sure, one or two might stick by chance, but you’ll probably end up wasting a lot of time and effort on people who don’t care about what you do or what you have to say.
Take a moment and think about the audience you’re trying to reach.”
Our take: Sure — common sense and logic would dictate that a thought leader, or business trying to solidify their authority in a space, whose only focus is a numeric increase in followers is one destined for failure. Yet, the world at large often tends to gravitate towards content, products, advice, and strategies that are merely popular, whether or not they’re actually valuable or even unique. This is one of the many unfortunate byproducts of information overload: an assessment of value based on shallow indicators of usefulness at the top level, done in part because it’s less time consuming, and perpetuated by wannabe thought leaders who use those trivial measures to position themselves as more informative than they actually are. Thankfully, it’s entirely avoidable with a little bit of true thoughtfulness, study, and industry conversation. With the right message directed at the right audience, the value will not only be obvious, but it will have far greater staying power than regurgitated, surface-level observations.
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What Thought Leadership Is…And Is Not, Says Thought Leader and PR Expert Cheryl Snapp Conner
From the Forbes:
“I hear from multiple people every week—and from our conversations I’m betting you do too—asking what it would take to make them a contributor to Forbes.com or to a mainstream publication. The problem is that in most every case, that’s the last thing these individuals should do. Definitely not the first. There’s a misperception that having a masthead and a column makes you inherently a bona fide thought leader. It does not.
For those who are publishing currently, all the angst and concern over “my persona, my opinions, my voice”— that’s not thought leadership either. That’s just about you. Readers care only about what matters directly or urgently to them, or gives them a useful, insightful or even a funny or contrarian idea they hadn’t thought about in a certain way that will make a difference to them.
It’s amazing how many people think credibility will suddenly descend on them because of a title of contributor or columnist. When it does happen, many fail to show up and do the real work, or they put out marginal material that falls very short of the mark.”
Our take: Again, as with article #2 — and most kinds of notoriety, really — individuals and organizations who want to be respected industry authorities will not be able to do so in a truly valuable or lasting way if they are focused on titles, followers, headlines, and other superficial badges of accomplishment. In a nutshell, real thought and market leadership is earned, not bought.
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