2026-01-17 08:26:29

"Thought leadership" has become a buzzword stripped of real meaning. Now it's just a label slapped on any content—doesn't matter if it's truly original, genuinely unique, or actually unprecedented.

The term used to mean something concrete: insights that break new ground. Fresh thinking. Perspectives you haven't encountered before.

But somewhere along the way, it morphed into corporate jargon. Every blog post, every take, every half-baked observation gets branded as "thought leadership." The bar keeps dropping.

If everything is thought leadership, then nothing is.

Real thought leadership? That's when your ideas genuinely shift how people see the space—whether it's about markets, technology, or strategy in Web3. Not just content. Real substance.

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HashRateHermit

· 17h ago

That's a great point. Nowadays, everything is called thought leadership, and as a result, everyone becomes a leader. It's hilarious.

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DefiVeteran

· 17h ago

Ah, that's the problem. Now there are self-proclaimed "thought leaders" everywhere, but none of them have truly made any real change.

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DAOplomacy

· 17h ago

honestly the incentive structures around "thought leadership" have become so sub-optimal it's almost funny... historical precedent suggests whenever we slap a label on everything, the signal-to-noise ratio just collapses. non-trivial externalities here—everyone's gaming the term now so actual insights get buried. path dependency is real and we're stuck in it

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BlockDetective

· 17h ago

Honestly, everyone is now claiming to be a "thought leader," which has long become cliché.

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PhantomMiner

· 17h ago

Honestly, everyone is claiming to be a thought leader now, but in the end, no one really is.

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Rugman_Walking