Specialist firms have carved out niches in the thought leadership industry in tech, real estate, asset management and other sectors. One stand-out in the legal industry is Harrington Communications, a thought leadership PR firm founded by Jay and Heather Harrington. Their motto: Deep and narrowly focused expertise is more valuable than vague and undifferentiated knowhow. In this episode of Everything Thought Leadership, Bob Buday speaks with Jay Harrington about the appeal of thought leadership ...
Jun 13, 2025•51 min
What is it about Korn Ferry's video-podcast series, the Briefings Podcast, that has attracted more than 16,000 email subscribers just one year after launch and as many as 120,000 views per episode? In this episode, Bob Buday speaks with returning guest Jonathan Dahl, Korn Ferry vice president and chief content officer, about the strategy behind the Briefings Podcast, the key lessons he has learned about podcasting, and the surprisingly low cost of producing a podcast.
May 22, 2025•35 min
With $1.9 billion in revenue and a global presence in more than 100 countries, Gensler is the world’s largest architecture and design firm. It is also a pioneer in that industry in using thought leadership to promote its expertise – and develop new expertise. As global editorial director, Sam Martin oversees the firm’s key channels: Dialogue magazine, Design Forecast, the Gensler blog, and Gensler’s social media accounts. He is the perfect person to dive into why thought leadership has become im...
Apr 30, 2025•45 min
Harvard Business Review (HBR) is the world’s most important journal on management, for managers. But how has the 103-year-old publication increased readership and influence amidst the explosion of free management advice published B2B companies? Amy Bernstein, recently promoted to HBR editor in chief, explains HBR’s strategy. Previously the No. 2 editor, Amy has been at HBR for over 13 years. Before HBR, she served in research and editing positions at Time Inc., consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton, s...
Mar 19, 2025•22 min
The thought leadership profession now has a thinktank. It's called the Global Thought Leadership Institute. It's geared towards developing thought leadership industry standards and best practices, which have largely been underdeveloped until now. In this installment of Everything Thought Leadership, Bob speaks with Cindy Anderson (CMO, IBM Institute for Business Value) and Lucia Rahilly (Global Editorial Director, McKinsey Publishing), two of eight advisers spearheading GTLI, whose inaugural con...
Jan 17, 2025•33 min
What goes into a successful business and technology podcast like ThinkCast? Gartner’s premiere podcast boasts more than 10,000 subscribers in 130 plus countries, and it has been downloaded more than 700,000 times. ThinkCast co-founder and former host Scott Smith is here to describe the keys to producing a great business podcast. Today on ETL, he goes over how to define your audience, form a strategy for success, and pick the right host for your podcast. Scott is an expert storyteller who worked ...
Dec 24, 2024•43 min
Josh Bernoff, former Forrester SVP of Idea Development, helps business and other non-fiction authors develop compelling books. He has collaborated on more than 50 books. Over his 20 years at Forrester, Josh covered the technological transformation of the television and other media sectors. He also edited two books and co-authored three of us his own, including the bestselling book on social media, “Groundswell.” Because books are a key piece of thought leadership marketing, Josh brings a valuabl...
Dec 13, 2024•47 min
Thought leaders may believe that great ideas are what attracts clients. But business development expert Mo Bunnell says that isn’t enough. The founder and CEO of Bunnell Idea Group believes thought leaders must build a relationship ecosystem of clients and business clients. Mo’s new book, “Give to Grow,” covers how to build highly productive, life-long business relationships. The accomplished thought leader speaks with Bob Buday about why thought leaders and thought leadership professionals who ...
Nov 08, 2024•59 min
If your firm is looking to publish thought leadership books, you must understand how the publishing landscape has changed. Enter Donya Dickerson, former McGraw-Hill associate publisher and current literary agent for Aevitas Creative Management. She’s going to walk us through what it takes for thought leadership professionals to secure publishing contracts for the experts in their firms. A full-service literary organization with agents around the world, Aevitas works with numerous authors, though...
Oct 04, 2024•28 min
With the explosion of business books over the past several years, the appeal of hybrid publishing has increased dramatically among thought leadership authors. But earning substantial market share with your business book isn’t easy. In this installment of Everything Thought Leadership, bestselling author and trend-curator Rohit Bhargava walks you through the pros and cons of the hybrid publishing option and what truly makes a great insight: the kind that will spur the success of your book. Rohit ...
Sep 12, 2024•53 min
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is changing the conversation around generative AI... literally. The $12 billion global consulting firm produces a podcast called Imagine This, where the host converses with a top-notch chatbot called GENE. The bot’s data set contains BCG’s cream-of-the-crop thought leadership, making it the ideal guinea pig to discuss the place of generative AI in thought leadership. Spurring BCG’s AI initiative and its impactful thought leadership strategy is Paul Michelman, our ne...
Aug 23, 2024•57 min
How do you present thought leadership content in interactive ways to stand out? Tom Fleming, global thought leadership director at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), has joined Bob Buday to discuss the key factors in publishing great thought leadership content and how the profession has changed over time. PwC is the $53 billion global advisory and accounting firm recognized as a LinkedIn Top Company and an EcoVadis sustainability powerhouse. It is also the company behind the hit management journal "s...
Aug 02, 2024•41 min
Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon changed the way B2B companies think about selling their products and services 13 years ago with their groundbreaking book, “The Challenger Sale," which was a bestselling sales book from the Corporate Executive Board on how to win over customers -- by challenging them to think differently about their problem and how to solve it. Today on Everything Thought Leadership, Brent and Bob Buday talk about lessons learned from that research. The accomplished author and resear...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 3 min
MIT Sloan Management Review is quite selective about the content it accepts, both articles and content proposals. If you want to be an influential thought leader who publishes in a prestigious magazine like MIT SMR, you need to understand its editorial review process. When it comes to the editorial process, MIT SMR Editor-in-Chief Abbie Lundberg is a 40-year content publishing veteran who has seen and heard it all. She previously worked at Harvard Business Review’s Analytic Services unit and was...
Apr 30, 2024•35 min
Michelle Swan knows the secret behind how Tercera’s portfolio companies earn lucrative returns on thought leadership--and no, it’s not just echoing the latest trends on the cloud, AI, etcetera. As CMO & Partner for the leading investment and advisory firm, Michelle drives its thought leadership strategy. This includes coordinating the firm’s marquee Tercera 30 annual report on cloud services trends. Michelle knows the true strategy for successful tech services firms lies in demonstrating the...
Mar 26, 2024•44 min
Award-winning business author Chunka Mui is keenly focused on generative A.I.’s thought leadership impact and how innovation can be used to fight climate change and social issues. Among his influential books, he co-authored the late 1990s bestseller “Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance.” The Wall Street Journal named it one of the five best books on the business impact of the internet. With five books and 25 years as a keynote speaker, Chunka is as savvy a thought ...
Mar 01, 2024•43 min
Evan I. Schwartz is an accomplished thought leader who marries storytelling with innovation to profound effect. He has written articles for the likes of Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, WIRED, American History and more. His books, which include "JUICE: The Creative Fuel that Drives World-Class Inventors" and "The Last Lone Inventor," have received rave reviews for their insightful breakdowns of legendary innovations, innovators, storytellers, and frameworks for business success. Beyo...
Feb 12, 2024•33 min
Anthony Marshall and Cindy Anderson are two leading lights within the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV), IBM’s acclaimed thought leadership think tank. Anthony serves as Senior Research Director of Thought Leadership for the IBV. In this role, he heads a global team of industry experts, statisticians, economists, and analysts who deliver actionable, data-vetted articles and reports on trends across numerous industries, technologies and operational management issues. Cindy, meanwhile, is the...
Jan 12, 2024•49 min
Malcolm Frank is the CEO of TalentGenius, a team of tech professionals dedicated to helping knowledge workers find the innovative AI tools their business needs, find AI powered jobs, and more. This Yale University graduate is considered one of the foremost authorities and visionaries in technology services, teaching companies how to master the growing game-changer that is AI and find community among technology professionals. Vinnie Mirchandani, former Gartner analyst and a previous guest on Ever...
Dec 13, 2023•41 min
Jonathan Dahl is the vice president and chief content officer of Korn Ferry, a $2.8 billion global organizational consulting firm. He is an instrumental part of the thought leadership machine at Korn Ferry, having helped develop several new content programs. These include “This Week in Leadership,” a column in which Korn Ferry experts weigh in on recent business developments, and the Briefings Podcast, a new show examining big workplace trends. On its own, “This Week in Leadership” attracts more...
Nov 24, 2023•40 min
Kimberly Eddleston is an inspiring thought leader on entrepreneurship and family businesses, and specifically how family dynamics can affect the those companies for better or worse. With a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut, Kim became an award-winning researcher focused on family business. She has won best paper awards from the Family Firm Institute, Diana International Conference on Women’s Entrepreneurship, and the Journal of Small Business Management. Kimberly is a professor of entrepr...
Oct 11, 2023•32 min
Martin Reeves is a senior vice president of the global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, and chairman of its research think-tank, the BCG Henderson Institute. This dedicated vehicle for thought leadership dissects new developments in business, technology, economics, science, and other fields. It has been instrumental in bringing to market a number of big management concepts and helping BCG grow from $1 billion in revenue in 2002 to nearly $12 billion last year. Martin is also a...
Sep 07, 2023•55 min
Maria Boulden, Gartner vice president and executive partner for sales, puts the sale back in sales. She has led cream-of-the crop sales teams for over 30 years. Her experience includes a collective 30 years at DuPont, the $13 billion revenue global chemical company, and running many global sales groups. In 2019, Maria decided to take her sales and coaching expertise to Gartner. On her LinkedIn profile, she describes her role at the $5 billion research firm as networking, supporting, coaching, gu...
Aug 02, 2023•36 min
Mara Stefan is Vice President of Global Insights at ManpowerGroup, a $20 billion talent services firm – one of the largest in the world. Over her 25-year career, Mara’s has done nearly everything in thought leadership, from working with executives and their organizations to create thought leadership content to developing and executing thought leadership marketing strategies. Previous to Manpower, Mara headed global thought leadership marketing for the IT services giant Cognizant Technology Solut...
Jul 13, 2023•53 min
Francis Hintermann directs Accenture’s thought leadership research machine. As Global Managing Director for Accenture Research, he runs a 350-person unit that has been helping the $63 billion (revenue) global consulting, IT services and outsourcing company stay on the forefront of digital expertise. He created the company’s Strategy Research team, which today is located in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia Pacific. Francis moved from Paris to New York City in 2015 to expand ...
Jun 29, 2023•55 min
11:11 – Microstresses Plaguing Thought Leaders & Thought Leadership Professionals 28:14 – The Biggest Challenges Developing Content for "The Microstress Effect" (Karen's book) 30:48 – How Karen has Managed her Thought Leadership Career Turns 34:32 Recognizing the Microstresses We Can Create for Other People Thought leadership has always been a highly stressful profession, and that stress continues to increase. In a world in which anyone with social media savvy can build a strong online follo...
May 31, 2023•39 min
Disruptive innovation expert and former academic Geoffrey Moore has made a career of rethinking how companies adapt technology; the subject of his magnum opus, “Crossing the Chasm,” which has printed over one million copies worldwide. An advisor for the likes of Google, Splunk, Microsoft, and Salesforce, he has garnered ample respect and renown for his breakthrough thought leadership. As described in his bio, it’s time for companies to stop explaining why they embrace disruptive innovation, but ...
May 22, 2023•43 min
Doug Farren is the quintessential thought leader on the middle market, having founded the National Center for the Middle Market: a research institute helmed by Visa, Chubb, and the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. Following a lengthy stint as senior supply chain manager of Limited Brands, Farren helped found the Center in 2011 to provide data analysis and insights concerning middle market companies. Ohio State has defined middle market businesses as those making between $10 m...
Apr 21, 2023•26 min
How can thought leaders improve their writing? There are few people more qualified to answer this question than Glenn Leibowitz, Group Head of Communications for McKinsey & Company’s Greater China region (based in Taipei, Taiwan), and a talented writer in his own right. In fact, he was recognized four years in a row as a LinkedIn Top Voice: twice in the Marketing & Social Media category and twice in the Management & Workplace category. Glenn takes great pride in teaching writing. He ...
Apr 05, 2023•47 min
Tom Davenport is an acclaimed author, writer, speaker, and professor helping businesses embrace major 21st century opportunities in artificial intelligence, analytics, big data, and more. A thought leader whom LinkedIn dubbed as a "Top Ten Voice in Tech" in 2018, Tom has changed the game on how people view the technology space. He coined the idea of "competing on analytics," in which in-depth data and analysis are key for organizations to stand above their competitors. Along the same lines, Tom ...
Mar 24, 2023•42 min
