I recently received a newsletter from BCG telling me about their new friend, TED. This relationship appears to go back a while: BCG announced in June 2013 that it would co-curate events with TED in Singapore and San Francisco as part of its program focused on the theme of ‘Game Changing’. In terms of developing and promoting thought leadership, it looks like a great idea.
We’re confident that having the opportunity to speak at a flagship event will have prompted many members of the firm to think even harder about thought leadership than they might have done – after all, there’s nothing like a spot of competition to drive bigger, better thoughts. In fact, according to Businessweek.com, BCG asked selected individuals to submit proposals. From these proposals, TED experts selected the ‘winners’ and paired them with TED coaches for a six-week training programme. The results are more engaging than any other consulting firm videos we have seen, conveying challenging concepts through real people with real personalities. We even spotted humour!
In terms of promoting thought leadership, the results are impressive: ‘As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify’ has been viewed over 1.4m times through the TED site, ‘What it takes to be a great leader’ over 1m times, and ‘What doctors can learn from each other’ over 700k times. A quick look at BCG’s YouTube channel suggests that the firm’s typical viewer numbers seldom make it into the thousands, never mind hundreds of thousands.
TED is looking to offer its services to more businesses. We think it’s only a matter of time before the next consulting firm takes up their offer.
