On Corporate Thought Leadership

Do you see thought leadership being done on a corporate level? Or is this solely the province of individuals?

I’ve been wondering a lot about this lately.

Is there a company you associate with leading (and publishing) innovation? We all know PEOPLE like this, but is this ever done well on a corporate scale – as a group?

Think of an innovative company, right now. Why do you think they’re innovative? Strictly their products or service output? Their content/publishing output? The people they employ? (If so, why do think that of their people?)

I think back to the heydey of corporate research labs: Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, IBM Research, etc. Was this thought leadership? And does this exist now? If it does, has it changed – I’m wondering if we only celebrate the aforementioned institution in hindsight. (Consider that Microsoft has an R&D group, but I never really hear anything from them. Is it me?) Were they well-known across their industries during their productive years?

If a company wants to be known as a “thought leader,” does it just need to hire individuals that serve as such? Or is there something a company can do to be perceived this way, in aggregate?

(That belies another, more cynical point: are people actually thought leaders, or are they just perceived as such? Is thought leadership productive, or is it … performative?)

Lot of questions. Maybe you have answers?