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Once you have prioritized the thought leadership themes to pursue, you want to find suitable angles to exploit. Angles aligned with your theme’s market maturity and where you have or can develop meaningful research. 

What is new: Search along well-defined types of questions when defining your thought leadership direction. 

Why it matters: Topics in a thought leadership structure can be outlined in various ways, and you want to build proven recipes to predict impact in advance. 

Finding angles: Even if themes and topics are clear, there are multiple ways to tell thought leadership stories. A great start is looking at different angles and evaluating which fits best for a theme. 

Below are six angles to consider when defining a theme from scratch. 

🥊 The impact you want to create 

• Initiate a change from state A to state B 
• Change journey from path C to path D 
• Accelerate successful early-stage initiatives 

This angle focuses on shifting from a present state to a well-defined future state. The market environment is stable, and the job to be done is execution centric. 

📈 The big trends shaping your industry 

• short-term, the coming year 
• mid-term, two to five years 
• long-term, five to ten years 

This angle is about defining a stepwise journey for more profound shifts. The trends shaping your industry evolve predictably, and sequencing of the jobs is the essential part of the challenge. 

🔀 Disruptive market forces 

• Technology 
• Regulation 
• Business models 
• Macro factors 

Market disruptions are hard to navigate, and the job is more challenging and happens faster when multiple factors contribute. This angle is suitable when navigating through disruptions, emphasizing the timing of shifts. 

🪩 Contextualization of new phenomena 

• From what it is to why it matters 
• Supported by concrete facts
• Explicit rather than clever language  

It is often easier to articulate what is happening than why it matters. This angle clarifies the critical contexts, emphasizing bringing outside-in perspectives where the whole picture is not visible within a business. 

❓Key strategic customer questions 

• why
• when 
• where
• how
• how much 

The most important question to address can shift over time, and you can explore this angle in two ways, either as a 360-degree view of all questions for a topic or a gradual shift through uncertainties from what to how much. 

✅ Opportunities to take action 

• Increase revenues 
• Grow new revenues 
• Strategy pivots 
• Reduce cost 
• Leverage new partnerships 

The final angle is action-centric, where you build from the impact you envision for your customer’s business. This powerful angle requires a lot of experience to replicate with predictable outcomes. 

Bottom line: Define which of the six angles you are comfortable with and pick a few as your base game when outlining a new thought leadership theme.