Coolhunting for the World's Thought Leaders

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 'Thought Leader Map' identifying influential thinkers across disciplines using a Delphi process and blogosphere analysis, revealing a shift from few dominant authorities to many specialists.

Contribution

It presents a novel methodology combining expert surveys and network analysis to map influential thought leaders across multiple fields.

Findings

Influencers are rare and specialized.

The era of few dominant authorities appears to be over.

Major thought leaders are identified through a new combined approach.

Abstract

Which thinkers are we guided by? A novel "Thought Leader Map" shows the select group of people with real influence who are setting the trends in the market for ideas. The influencers in philosophy, sociology, economics, and the "hard sciences" have been identified by a Delphi process, asking 50 thought leaders to name their peers. The importance of the influencers is calculated by constructing a co-occurrence network in the Blogosphere. Our main insight is that the era of the great authorities seems to be over. Major thought leaders are rare - the picture is composed of many specialists.