Does curation really equate to thought leadership?

Posted in Best Practices By Content Curation Marketing On April 8, 2013

Craig Baidings rants about how content marketers have misappropriated the term thought leadership.  His co-author, Dr. Liz Alexander, writes the following:

Thought leaders advance the marketplace of ideas by positing actionable, commercially relevant, research-backed, new points of view. They engage in “blue ocean strategy” thinking on behalf of themselves and their clients, as opposed to simply churning out product-focused, brand-centric white papers or curated content that shares or mimics others’ ideas.

Baidings and Alexander clearly think that curation is not thought leadership because it equates to simply rehashing others’ ideas.  But at the same time, one can argue that new thoughts are built upon old ideas, and that curation is essential for conceiving new ideas and points of view, especially if the curators are adding thoughtful commentary.

 

Read original article at Thought Leadership…

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  • Dr_Liz

    You are absolutely right to say that focusing on current ideas often leads to new thoughts and approaches. But that presupposes that the curator does more than simply collect and disseminate those old ideas…that they additionally think of ways to improve upon them. As Tweet #96 in our book Thought Leadership Tweet points out, “Creation isn’t the same as curation. It can’t be rushed and is best done in stages. What kind of gestation period are you allowing?”

    We go on to point out that content curation is a valuable precursor to thought leadership, but that still doesn’t make them synonymous.

    • http://twitter.com/TweetsFromPawan Pawan Deshpande

      I would agree with your statement: “content curation is a valuable precursor to thought leadership, but that still doesn’t make them synonymous”