Guess what? The research isn’t the thought leadership. It’s what you build on top of the research that demonstrates your expertise.
Every researcher I know has gotten this question or comment at some point: “Steve Jobs said research isn’t helpful because people don’t know what they want.” Actually, what Steve said in an interview in 1998 was: “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want…
If you collect information from your customers, you can probably build thought leadership content from data you already have!
It’s not as easy as it looks, and running your own groups can affect the results.
I bet you can identify 12 topics for thought leadership content from research you’ve done. If you can’t, plan better in your next research project.