Last week I wrote about HBS’ effort to legitimize leadership as a multi-faceted function worthy of scholarly pursuit as opposed to anecdotal advice.

Back in 1994 Joel Kurtzmen coined the term “thought leader” and defined it as follows,

“Thought leader is a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights (thinklets).”

Back then it may have had meaning, but 16 years later its frequent use in conjunction with the leadership flavor-of-the-month has reduced it almost to meaninglessness.

“Innovative ideas” doesn’t mean restating old stuff in new ways or recycling ideas the way the fashion industry recycles styles.

More importantly, truly innovative thinking is not tied or constrained by ideologies or past actions.

A great number of leadership fundamentals were first stated 2500 years ago in China by Lao Tzu and others of his ilk.

It is good to restate them in language current to the time and place, but presenting them as original or innovative and then claiming, or accepting, the mantle of thought leader is not.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalidoskopika/2022600793/

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 1:30 am and is filed under Leadership, Personal Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: harvard business school, lao tzu
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