Knowing that “thought leadership” can boost revenue and market awareness, consultancies are working hard to improve the intellectual capital in their marketing programs, a new Bloom Group study shows. The study’s authors now look at how to generate and capitalize on thought leadership.


Judging by the dozens of business books that consulting firms collectively publish annually, the hundreds of unsolicited articles they pitch to Harvard Business Review, and the scores of email newsletters and blogs they have launched, any observer of the industry would have to say that “thought leadership” is in. Very, very in. As the late, great comedian Jimmy Durante would put it, “Everybody wansta get inta the act!”

Although the term “thought leadership” is now used loosely in other industries, it’s more important for companies that are in the very business of giving advice — consulting firms — to have their ideas considered superior, especially by the executives who commission consulting projects. Thought leadership for a consulting firm really does matter when trying to justify a partner’s $8,000-a-day billing rate or why the CEO’s longtime adviser (often the consulting firm he came from) shouldn’t be chosen for this project.

But despite coveting thought leadership, most consulting firms say that they haven’t achieved it, according to a study we completed this September on the intellectual capital development and marketing practices in North American professional services firms. (We surveyed 109 consulting and 18 IT services firms out of 179 professional services firms in all.) While consulting firms as a whole rated strong intellectual capital as the single most important factor in effective marketing, they graded the ideas they took to market as being a little better than average (just 3.7 on a scale of 1 to 5). To paraphrase the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, the tune of these consultancies might be “if we only had a thought.”

This is, admittedly, a bit harsh. Many consulting firms possess significant expertise that they haven’t captured and marketed, but only practiced. Their intellectual capital remains largely in the heads of their professionals. But too many publish concepts that lack examples, coherence, and new ideas. That helps explain why so many consulting books end up in the bargain bins just months after launch or why HBR rejects more than 90 percent of the manuscripts that arrive unsolicited.

Furthermore, the survey responses of some consultancies indicated that when they did have a thought — that is, excellent intellectual capital for the content of their marketing programs — they often didn’t know how to market it effectively. And still others didn’t know how to use their intellectual capital to renew old consulting practices and create whole new services.