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Digital culture

Thought Leaders and Thought Followers

August 14, 2020 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: < 1 minutes

Thought leadersIndustry is keen on identifying experts with unique insight and capacity to influence. They write the map for the rest of us to follow. They’re called thought leaders.

Alternatively there are thought followers. These are the folks who repeat, regurgitate, reshape and mimic thought leaders. Their association by sharing on the stage of Twitter can make them seem just as much a part of things as the thought leader.

Retweeting is easy. Coming up with the stuff for people to retweet, however, is more difficult.

There’s nothing wrong with being a thought follower. Amplification of good ideas is important. Many times I’m a thought follower. Sometimes I’m a thought leader. So I’m not judging.

But real thought leaders are marked by the unexpected collision of ideas that they see and often facilitate. It’s this connection of unrelated domains that often defines these individuals as leaders.

Good ideas are good ideas independent of who shares them. But too often social media conflates the follower and the leader.


If you like this post you might like the 33 charts Authority Archives. It’s everything written here on digital influence. In fact, every post on 33 charts has carefully placed tags that help you get to related writing. Enjoy!

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Tagged With: Authority, Big Thinking, Digital influence, Leadership

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Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin and one of health care’s influential
voices on technology & medicine.
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