Thought Leadership Today
In the ancient world we can point to a handful of people who shaped the way civilization developed, whose ideas were considered worth hearing. As literacy expanded, as knowledge deepened and accumulated, as subject matter became more specialized, as new fields were created, as communication technology advanced, there were more and more opportunities for Thought Leadership.
There was no Roman History expert before the Roman Empire. Nobody was the world’s best piano teacher before the piano was invented. And before mass communication, it was hard to be the world-renown expert on anything.
Today, of course, we have Roman history and pianos. We have more stuff, more subjects, more specialization than at any time previous, and we just keep getting more and more. Each niche, each small subject within a subject, can have its own expert, or group of experts, whom the world looks to when they have a question about stock derivatives or luxury wedding invitations or stop-motion animation or carbon nanotubes or…
There are more “spaces to fill” on the Thought Leader roster than ever before. And because of the unprecedented ease of acquiring and distributing information and ideas, it is more possible than ever for someone (you?) to find a niche and lead it.
Not only that, but if you can’t find a niche, it is easier than ever to start one. Drilling further into an established field, finding specialties within specialties, synthesizing a new field at the intersection of several areas, or creating a whole new land of ideas with a radical new technology.
The possibilities today are endless. And increasing.
