Clients ask me to write thought-leadership articles and white papers all the time. The majority of these pieces define a business challenge and talk about a solution to that challenge that’s basically a generic description of the vendors’ current solution. But recently, I ran into an exception.
I was asked to write about an emerging market segment for a technology vendor. This particular segment is undergoing major, rapid change as a result of new federal guidelines and regulations—as well as a general perception that this industry needs to improve quality and reduce costs.
President Obama’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel once said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste—and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could before.” IT vendors in this space are certainly taking this advice to heart.
A number of vendors are racing to introduce technology solutions to address the issues in the aforementioned industry. However, it takes time to build brand new solutions. The vendor faced the dilemma of whether to write about the capabilities of existing solutions vs. writing about what a long term solution should look like (and keep its fingers crossed that the solution it brings to market matches somewhat with its early thought leadership).
Ultimately, my client decided to produce true thought leadership, a future-looking view of what a solution should look like, rather than sticking to a description of their current solutions. In this way, this company is helping their customers make their decisions based on a long-term view of what could be, rather than limiting their solutions simply to “what is” and what they can sell customers today. To this I say, “Bravo!”
How have you defined thought leadership?
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