The food pill, which provides a full meal in a capsule, has long been a staple of science fiction. Now, mass producers of food for thought have an equivalent: myriad tiny gobbets of thought leadership, tailored by artificial intelligence to your interests and directed to inboxes everywhere.
Thought leadership was already “a great river of swill” in 2017, when I last complained about its remorseless expansion. Ah, those heady, innocent days! With the help of generative AI, it is now a roaring, malodorous, torrent.
A new book, The ROI of Thought Leadership, by Cindy Anderson and Anthony Marshall, defines the genre as “distinctive, evidence-based intelligence that gives leaders the insights they need to make better business decisions”. It encompasses consultancies’ white papers, online interactive explainers and polls on topical issues, and ruminative social media posts on platforms from Substack to LinkedIn.