…on Healthcare Thought leadership

To be perfectly open, the term “thought leadership” grates on my ears a bit. It’s appropriate and concise, but it’s been so painfully overused around the Internet.

Thing is, the concept itself is so amazingly important in healthcare (so I’ll learn to deal).

Thought leadership is all about sharing ideas, listening, processing, applying, learning, and then repeating it all again. It’s a powerful tool. It’s especially powerful when you’re solving big problems, and no other industry has problems as big as healthcare.

That cycle…the sharing, listening, processing, applying, learning…it’s pointless if the idea streams you engage with aren’t related to what you do.

I’ve seen some leaders in the healthcare space splashing around the healthcare pool, but unfortunately, way outside their most influential corners. So for example, Dr. David Katz is absolutely dominating content creation and healthcare…in the area of personal health and nutrition. I wouldn’t expect the CEO of a hospital data analytics company to write on the topics he does — they’re just on a completely different floaty.

Any leadership you work to build around thought should be in your sphere of expertise and it should integrate your strategy. You should choose topics that branch cleanly off your product and service offerings and that your customers are interested in and want to hear about. If you’re unsure of what those might be, you should probably talk to your sales people.

Featured Healthcare B2B Thought Leader

Every week we feature an active thought leader in the healthcare B2B space, and this week we’re covering Jonathan Bush of athenahealth.
Jonathan does dance around the peripherals of the industry, but most importantly, he talks directly to his core audience (doctors) with posts like this one.  It covers the concept of empowering doctors through open systems…systems that thrive on his company’s core focus, the EHR. It also demonstrates a connection to the industry by mentioning some of the factual points about coding, billing, and information in general that doctors find most frustrating…all while connecting it back to their primary motivator (and an increasingly explicit focus in the industry) — the patient.

Brainstorming Starters

This week is easy. Everybody’s chatting about all of the awesome exhibits and speakers from HIMSS 15. Regardless of your focus, you can probably get a post, comment, or tweet (#HIMSS15) out of it, so check out what people are saying, and get your two cents out there.

Content Tips/Insights

Our core work at Locutus is content creation. It sounds simple, but in a world of information, content is life.

One thing that amazes me about the B2B space is the complete lack of story telling. In an industry as dramatic, and high stress as this one, I know that every company has amazing stories that can be shared…case studies, blog posts, even slide presentations and audio recordings. Unfortunately, we just don’t hear enough of them.

I believe that’s because most leaders are disconnected from the really great stories of lives and budgets their products and services save. So the big question is, where do you find your great stories?