University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Thought Leadership
Book

Thought Leadership

Prompting Businesses to Think and Learn

Laurie Young
Kogan Page, 2013
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

This refreshing, original treatise takes on a rarely served but important topic. British author and executive Laurie Young points out that few people write about or study “thought leadership” for its true worth. Yet, collectively, corporate thought-leadership budgets are enormous, rivaling those for advertising. getAbstract recommends Young’s insights to business leaders, students, investors and all who want to understand the power of thought leadership, including how to create, disseminate it and benefit from it.

Summary

“Thought Leadership”

Thought leadership surrounds you. It manifests itself in ideas ranging from “business process re-engineering” to “blue ocean strategy” and “management by objectives,” and in tools used for decades or longer, such as Gantt charts. Many of the technologies and processes you take for granted were once ideas that became common practice through the stages of thought leadership – from idea, to article or paper, to first adoption, perhaps a book, then broad implementation. Many ideas never reach common use and some get debunked along the way, fall out of vogue, or are replaced by other tools or processes. Today’s flood of books, papers, conferences and new information delivered steadily through journals and websites attests to the pervasiveness of thought leadership. It has become, perhaps, the most effective means available for organizations to build their reputation, identify and lead new fields, and expand the scope of their business.

Tens of thousands of business books are published each year – and perhaps hundreds of thousands of articles and videos – but they’re not all exercises in thought leadership. True thought leadership springs from “intellectual...

About the Author

Laurie Young served in senior roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, British Telecom and Unisys.

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