From concept to thought leadership

The biggest problem in thought leadership these days isn’t necessarily the quality of the writing; it is the scarcity of fresh ideas.

With AI, we have already reached a point where creativity must focus less on the articulation of words and more on how well ideas are framed and which stories are captured.

In other words, the place to put your creative energy is now in the early stages of the idea production process – in the conception and formulation of your ideas.

While it’s true that ideas abound, the problem is the scarcity of “big” ideas that stimulate new thinking and reshape the way we look at entire topics. That’s where ideation – a structured habit of thinking and generating new concepts – comes in. And now, with the help of AI, this process can go faster and deeper.

For years I have guided professionals through the ideation process in workshops and through my book, Write like a thought leader. Today I’m sharing five techniques you can use to turn AI ideation into a powerful method for discovering new insights.

Method 1. Get interviewed and then ask the AI

Being interviewed is a great way to externalize your expertise and gain new insight into your own ideas.

Select a skilled and professional interviewer who can dig deep and show you your own contradictions and layers of thinking. This type of interviewer will make you think more creatively and explore areas of your expertise that you may not have articulated before.

Once the interview is over, transcribe it and start asking questions about it with an AI. If you’ve built a custom model with your own writing style and audience personas, upload this transcript to that model and start asking questions like:

· Where was I going?

· Where did I take my ideas into new and interesting territory?

· How does what I say support an emerging story in (insert your niche topic)?

The goal is to distinguish emerging stories from dominant stories in your field. Thought leaders deal in ideas – in emergent stories to be specific.

The ability to capture these allows you to serve your audience by providing insight into what’s on the horizon.

With AI, it’s a bit like working as Hollywood screenwriters did in the early days: with both a writer and a talker. The bot becomes the speaker and you, as the writer, remain the primary editor.

Before generation AI: You had to be interviewed, pay a human to transcribe it, and then sift through tens of thousands of your own words to pull out the nuggets.

After generation AI: You record it, it’s translated almost instantly, and you can copy it to an AI for instant querying and analysis.

Method 2. Freewrite, then ask the AI

Freewriting is one of the most effective ideation techniques we use in our thought-leadership incubators, like the one we run for Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs.

I often start sessions with a prompt – something broad, but intended to provoke deep thinking, such as “Thought leadership is a state of mind. Write down how your vision can make the world a better place.” Participants go on mute and write as quickly as possible, without stopping and without self-editing. This process gives them access to unfiltered thoughts that might not otherwise surface.

Freewriting increases the search space for new ideas. This is how you encounter your best thoughts. Sometimes people are shocked at how much word volume they can produce in a 5 to 7 minute session.

You can freewrite alone or participate in a freewriting session. From there, as if you were being interviewed, you put the text you wrote into an AI and start asking questions about it. This is pure creativity. The ideas came from your depth. AI then becomes a sparring partner to see how far you can develop what has arisen within you. Ask questions like:

· What are the underlying themes in this text?

· The writer (me) is an emerging thought leader who serves (insert audience). How can what I wrote be used to inspire this audience?

· Take this scenario and expand it one or two more steps. What could the future look like if this trend continues?

Before generation AI: You had to manually review your freewriting and try to extract insights from it yourself.

After generation AI: You can instantly transform your text by asking questions about it, then use AI to exaggerate or develop ideas. You can also expand scenarios further.

Method 3. Search for white space ideas

With AI, you have the ability to examine not only what is being said in your niche, but more importantly, what is not being said.

White space is that gap.

Ask the AI ​​what is missing from the conversation around your field and what your specific target group needs that is not being addressed by competitors. This technique helps identify new areas of thought leadership that you can potentially occupy.

Here’s how to approach it. Ask the AI:

· Who are you writing about (fill in your topic area)?

· What do they say?

· My audience is (fill in audience description). What are these other people not saying that is important to my audience?

The AI ​​can identify gaps in the market and areas that are underserved, giving you clear direction for your next article.

Before generation AI: You manually scan industry reports and competitor content, merging where there’s room for your voice.

After generation AI: AI tools quickly collect and analyze industry content, giving you actionable white space insights.

Method 4. Upload recordings and chat of your workouts and then ask the AI

Your training sessions are a goldmine for story ideas and themes because they represent your audience’s questions and concerns in real time. Upload the transcripts of these sessions and ask the AI ​​to perform a sentiment analysis. What are the pain points of the participants? Which topics aroused the most interest?

Get into their minds and ask the AI ​​to help you understand what they need from you as an instructor. Then come up with new story ideas that meet these needs by sharing your knowledge. Don’t forget the chat from your training sessions: upload it too and use it for story ideas. Ask questions like:

· What is it that the public really has a hard time with?

· What was the most common question or concern from participants?

· What new story ideas can I create to address these issues and share my expertise?

Before generation AI: You would have to manually search the training transcripts and chats to gather insights.

After generation AI: AI can summarize in minutes, extract key themes, analyze sentiment, and highlight participant concerns.

Method 5. Create and query audience personas with AI

One of the best ways to ensure your ideas resonate is to build detailed personas of your audience, using AI to refine and deepen those personas. Start by identifying high-level issues your audience faces and then gradually narrow down to very specific issues.

Once you’ve landed on a very specific problem that you understand, you can dig deeper into how you can help solve it. These solutions contain new story ideas. This is how the Story Framing System I created works. Although I hate to admit it, AI makes it easier to work faster and go deeper when you apply The Story Framing System.

Keep asking the AI ​​questions, as if it were a 360 degree interview of one of your audience members. My suggestion is to focus on only one target group at a time. Ask the AI:

· Who in which company/job do you have difficulty (fill in your solution area). Then select one of the generated options.

· What are their high-level issues?

· What are their more specific internal and external problems?

· Write a psychological profile of my audience with this insight.

Once you have trained the AI ​​in your own expertise, you can ask it what very specific problem you can solve for this target group.

Before generation AI: You would manually build audience personas, based on limited research and assumptions.

After generation AI: With AI tools, you can quickly iterate on personas, from broad to highly specific pain points, uncovering new story angles along the way.

For me, these are some of the best ways to make human-machine collaboration fruitful.

Let the machine generate, and you get all the fun and ideas!

Of course, you do this with a grain of salt, using your editorial and clever storytelling techniques to filter out the nonsense, half-truths and outright misinformation that can be generated.

Incorporating AI into your ideation process can help you explore new areas, shape your ideas in unique ways, and maintain a fresh and impactful presence in your field.

Let me know how it goes for you.