Dorie Clark: Thought Leadership 101 | Big Think.
Dorie Clark: Thought Leadership 101
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Author and consultant Dorie Clark defends the term “thought leader” in this video interview by differentiating it from celebrity and expertise. A thought leader isn’t in it for the fame — it’s all about ideas — and being a thought leader is more than just expertise because an expert doesn’t necessarily need to have followers to qualify. She then delves into how anyone can become a thought leader. The secret isn’t to try and come up with radical new ideas. Pretty much everything you could ever think of has already been thought up by someone else. Instead, the key is understanding that big ideas can be simplified and that you can make a major contribution by finding unique ways to communicate those simplified ideas. Clark’s new book is Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It.
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DORIE CLARK:
Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and the World Economic Forum blog. Recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), which has been translated into Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Polish, and Thai; and Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It, which was released by Portfolio/Penguin in April 2015. Her newest book is Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive.
Clark consults and speaks for a diverse range of clients, including Google, the World Bank, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Yale University, the Mount Sinai Medical Center, and the National Park Service. She is a former presidential campaign spokeswoman, an adjunct professor of business administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and a Visiting Professor for IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Dorie Clark: The word “thought leader” was coined in 1994 by a gentleman named Joel Kurtzman. And originally it applied to someone whose ideas merited attention. These days thought leadership in some ways has become an overused term. Some people claim it for themselves and say, “I’m a thought leader in this. I’m a thought leader in that.” And so as a result sometimes people are a little allergic to the terminology and think that no one really is a thought leader. But I actually believe it’s a worthy term and a worthy goal because what we’re talking about is something very distinct from either celebrity or expertise. If you are a celebrity, that’s really just about fame. You’re just known. Sometimes you’re just known for being known. If you were a thought leader, it is about your ideas; you’re known for your ideas which is far more valuable to society. And an expert. That’s a great thing to be. It means you know your stuff. You’re knowledgeable. But if you’re a thought leader, it means you have to have followers. It means you’re engaging in the world and that means your ideas are going to have far more impact.
Some people think that they can’t have a big idea; they can’t be a thought leader because everything’s already been done. They have an idea, but somebody else got there first. The truth is every idea has already been taken. That is no excuse not to do something about it. I write business books and if you take a business book and you distill it down into a one-page summary every single piece of advice in every single business book can fit on a notecard and is going to look something like the key to networking is being nice to people. Or the key to being a good manager is to listen. These are things that are not rocket science, but yet they are things that too many people don’t know and they are things that in a lot of ways we are not ever going really to be able to fully understand unless we hear it properly with an open heart and an open mind. And the way that you do that is through stories and anecdotes that you hear and by something being conveyed from a particular perspective. You have something unique to offer by dint of who you are. Even if something in theory has been done before, it hasn’t been done by you in the way that you can do it. It’s time to step forward and to recognize that you can make a contribution….
To read the transcript, please go to https://bigthink.com/videos/thought-leadership-101
@muskduh
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
Thank you for all the videos, Big Think.
@SiddharthBhatla
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
Amazing!
@izregistered
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
I just want to know how ANYONE can be considered an EXPERT when they have ZERO real world business experience?
@sleepycoyote1
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
I have a novel idea, why don't we go back to teaching young people how to be their own best thought leader. Teach people to think for themselves. Then we wouldn't have so many socially engineered sheep, with no common sense. Of course the Communist Progressive Left, would no longer have any useful idiots to control.
@Zania16ify
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
This fool looks like dumbo the fucking dweeb.
@tHatReaLSHiZ
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
The ultimate, unifying truth is being revealed now. Google "Truth Contest" and read "The Present"
@ryanizer11
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
Just hearing this has made my day even better because I have had many ideas for inventions or ideas that have already been done but some haven't. The most annoying part of creativity is using it to make your dream come true I wish that some day I will be able to make my dream reality
@OmniphonProductions
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
0:00 – Phrase not word. Now that we've got that out of the way…
Sadly many celebrities think their opinions are valuable simply by virtue of their success in an image-driven profession, despite having no more formal (or autodidactic) education in the subject matter than your average college drop-out. Even more sadly, millions of "regular people" also buy into this fallacy, adopting the opinions of celebrities, without consideration for their lack of expertise.
This video, to some extent, may unintentionally further a similar phenomenon, by which people whose thoughts are primarily derived from agenda-driven sound bites THINK they know about this or that subject matter, so they go out into the world (real or cyber) and confidently spread their "knowledge" to others, perpetuating views that are, in fact, based on monumentally limited and often inaccurate information.
The message of this video is only valid if tomorrow's thought leaders actually THINK today.
@216trixie
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
I really, really, can't tell.
@koraxsan
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
I`m a bit sleepy so tell me if this is wrong, did she just used the most abstract way possible of saying "get of your ass and do something useful"?.
@jbrown704
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
I'm a leader of thots
@coureurdebois
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
ok, is that a man or women.
@BillGorman
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
Problem is all we get is Control Freak Leadership!
@cellocovers3982
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
what sex is this person?
@phaggott
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
That nigga kinda cute
@ThisIsMyFullName
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
The difficult part is to get people to actually listen, or pay attention to the changes you are making. People often value result higher, then the idea that created the result. Thereby neglecting the very notion, that the result couldn't exist without the idea. And that a thought process also requires work, and deserves admiration.
@VintageRabbit
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
It's exactly as she states, the ideas she conveys aren't wholly original or new. Yet people forget to address them in a manner that is of use to themselves and others. The comments seem to be addressing the same point she makes, so I guess it's mission accomplished. Being a dick isn't new, but at least the people in the comments section are doing it their way.
@Fanouriou
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
"Doogie Howser, you have let yourself go!"
@TheJaseku
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
wow that's an addon 4 me
@AnonymousMurse
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
Dude looks like a lady…
@shanish82
November 24, 2025 at 10:53 pm
Dorie is a funny name for a boy, times are-a-changing
Comments are closed.