Coolhunting for the World's Thought Leaders

Abstract: Which thinkers are we guided by? A novel "Thought Leader Map" shows the select group of people with real influence who are setting the trends in the market for ideas. The influencers in philosophy, sociology, economics, and the "hard sciences" have been identified by a Delphi process, asking 50 thought leaders to name their peers. The importance of the influencers is calculated by constructing a co-occurrence network in the Blogosphere. Our main insight is that the era of the great authorities seems to be over. Major thought leaders are rare - the picture is composed of many specialists.