Ideas-Led Growth is a virtuous cycle of execution, with marketing and communication at the vanguard for making better happen by making it visible to as large and as relevant an audience as possible. It’s both a mindset and a method. We call it GRACE for the five parts of that virtuous cycle.

Generate

You start the process by generating new ideas and insights. They don’t have to change the world. They just have to matter within your specific context. Some of my clients achieve this on very specialized topics. The starting point is to survey the landscape to understand what’s missing and how your ideas go beyond the status quo. 

Reorient

Ideas are just the beginning. You also have to reorient what you do and how you do it. If your idea is about making something better (most ideas should be), you first have to make sure it brings about internal change. Ideas become the driving force for marketing, sales, product development, and every public-facing aspect of your business. 

Act

Acting on what you say means putting your thought leadership into practice. Tech leaders will create a proof of concept, or service providers a client success story. Yes, thought leadership and position papers are part of the process, but you have to build something credible first. 

Communicate

You have to share your idea to make it happen. That means writing, speaking, sharing with others. Traditional thought leadership content creation gets stuck somewhere in the middle of this part. But, in reality, it’s only one element. It can be formal or informal, even just in important conversations that get your idea across. 

Expand

Yesterday’s ideas can become old news. You want to build on a foundation. Business leaders do this by building new products or features on top of their ideas, new ideas on top of existing products, messages that express new realities, and realities that manifest new messages. It has to be a continual process or renewal from within ideas, or you fall behind.