Blueprint for Unleashing Innovation in Thought Leadership | Maxine Mackie

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The Thought Leadership Accelerator

How do you turn brilliant but hidden expertise into actionable innovation? Maxine Mackie, Managing Director of Label Sessions, reveals how she connects thought leaders with businesses to solve real problems, drive progress, and turn big ideas into business impact.

How do you bridge the gap between brilliant ideas and real-world impact?

In this episode, Peter Winick sits down with Maxine Mackie, Managing Director of Label Sessions, to explore the art of translating thought leadership into actionable innovation. Maxine shares her journey from working with IBM’s research labs to founding a global expert network. She reveals the power of connecting thought leaders with businesses to solve real problems and drive progress.

Maxine highlights the challenges of identifying hidden experts—those who are brilliant in their domains but often overlooked because they don’t self-promote. She also emphasizes the value of collaboration in creating impactful thought leadership and why innovation often thrives at the intersection of diverse perspectives. Together, they discuss strategies for thought leaders to commercialize their expertise while staying relevant in a rapidly changing world.

This conversation is packed with actionable insights for thought leaders, CEOs, and anyone looking to turn innovation into a competitive edge. Don’t miss Maxine’s advice on finding your voice, building a network, and navigating the balance between isolation and collaboration in thought leadership creation.

Three Key Takeaways

Collaboration Fuels Innovation: Thought leadership thrives at the intersection of diverse perspectives, and collaboration often sparks the most impactful ideas.

Hidden Experts Hold Untapped Value: Many brilliant minds remain undiscovered because they don’t self-promote. Finding and amplifying these experts is key to solving complex business challenges.

Translate Ideas Into Action: Success in thought leadership requires bridging technical or academic brilliance with clear, actionable strategies that resonate with businesses and drive results.

Maxine emphasizes the transformative potential of collaboration in driving innovation. To explore how collaborating with clients can unlock new levels of value, we invite you to read this insightful article by Peter Winick.

 

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Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome. Welcome, this is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Maxine Mackie. She is the managing director at Label Sessions based in Scotland. So I will be the one with the accent today because she’s got better language than I do. So anyway, what? We’re bored today. Maxine, how are you?

Maxine Mackie I’m very well. Thank you so much for having me, Peter.

Peter Winick My pleasure. So give us a bit of a overview of your thought leadership journey in your. Experiences with thought leadership.

Maxine Mackie Bob. So I founded a company called Label Sessions, which is the Global Innovation Expert network. So for me, thought leadership is crucial and the core of our offering. What we do is kind of a two different things. We run accelerator projects with big brands around the world and also our clients access our kind of a global innovation expert network directly. And what I found is we set up a really kind of a we’ve been in stealth mode with labor sessions for a few years, really interested in how you can kind of really find the people who have been there and done that to work on a problem inside our clients. And that really for me was key because I had this amazing experience in consulting. Where I worked with my job was essentially to translate. I worked for IBM and I my job was to translate all these research assets and new patents that were coming out from thought leaders in their fields, but they were thought leaders that weren’t really kind of in market. And as an example of that, the research labs were directly built in out of town location. So they weren’t in cities, they weren’t in and around people who were using a lot of kind of a products and services are just like you would see in the cities. And my job was to translate new tech and emerging tech and think about really creative and commercial use cases of them.

Peter Winick Yeah. So still stay there a minute because I think there’s a lot of folks in the fall leadership space whose job is somewhere between translation cross pollination, call it what you will, so you get this really great thought leadership that comes from call it an academic bent, right? Like a really or technical or subject matter expert, etc.. And it’s really, really good. But it might be a little thick. It might be a little heavy, It might be a lot to wade through because certain disciplines, that’s their training, right? If you’re an academic, you know, you don’t order lunch without having 19 footnotes. It’s just the way you are. But when you move to the commercial side, the business community wants to know what is it, What’s in it for me? How does it impact my business? Why is it important? In about seven seconds? So it sounds like that’s a lot of your gift is to be able to take it from the technical or the academic to the business for sure.

Maxine Mackie And it’s really around, I guess, the wider kind of a proposition design. What do we want to do? Why do we want to do it? What should we have to the business in that space? And then how do we do it? And for me, part of my thought leadership journey in becoming an expert in innovation and bringing to life first of a kind products innovation programs is really to understand what’s possible with technology, what does the world need and to be able to hook in to so many different, I guess, areas of expertise from I need to be into trends, what’s happening in the world, what’s happening all around the world, what are people doing? What are consumers interested in? What is technology allowing us to do and trying then bring that to strategies for the clients that we work with. And because I think I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many thought leaders. I really lucked out when I was in consulting. I had a really a natural experience and as a result have really been passionate about finding the people who have really been there and done that. Because I was lucky, I won a bunch of awards for projects I got on looking at really interesting Being in big conferences or hearing other people from my company got talk about, you know, the kind of projects that we got a one of these awards. But the reality was we were seven people in a room with Take to Windows under like really strict ten days and only 47 people evals that we had to pull. And because of that experience, I have been really driven and passionate about finding other thought leaders, bringing them into projects that we deliver at label sessions, and also allowing people who have really cultivated their craft a mechanism to commercialize their experience. Because most people in big businesses and the clients that we work with want to speak to someone who’s been in their shoes, similar shoes.

Peter Winick The value prop of label sessions is really this network that you’ve got is you’re finding these, let’s call them somewhat obscure, you know, experts, Instapundit. But I want to go back to a couple of things that you said earlier, specific to innovation. It definitely applies to innovation, but I think it also applies to some other domains of thought leadership as well, which is who? Like, nobody’s opposed to it. Right? It’s very rare that you sit in a boardroom or meeting with senior leaders and say, you know what? Yeah, that innovation thing, it’s okay if we’re less innovative. We don’t need to be like, there’s not a big anti innovation movement out in the universe. And if there was, they probably wouldn’t say it out loud. It’s not going to be good for your career. I think the question becomes and you talked about the technology and some of those issues. Who really owns it? What does it mean when we say innovation here in this context, at this company at this moment? And then what do we do about it? So I think that’s kind of a pre to what you’re doing. So it sounds like by the time they’ve gotten to you but declined to come to you and there’s still some fuzziness around ownership and even definition of what they mean by innovation versus, you know, incremental product improvement.

Maxine Mackie So as I think is probably not incremental product innovation that fits within the kind of a different business units and teams. But there’s a real challenge because I think you alluded to this, Peter, everybody wants to do innovation and companies want to do it in-house as well. There’s a real shift away from completely sourcing some of those functions. But what we’ve seen and what we do with Sessions is companies really wanting to bring in expertise to coach their teams on a particular thing, expertise to kind of bring thought leadership on a particular area could be around how do we treat design leadership, how do we use Gen I really creatively in brand strategy work? So what we find is it’s typically on the remit or the era of the kind of a most senior leader, the CEO. They really kind of up their involvement is the thing that can often support traction, but different teams own elements of innovation. And I think that’s a really good thing. Yeah, real kind of a marketplace. It does also mean it’s challenging because there’s lots of things going on, but that’s, I think, always the case in a big company.

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Peter Winick So I want to go to a slightly different direction now. So you’re, I would imagine constantly out there on the lookout for talent, right, for thought leadership for interesting folks. And I think what’s interesting or what’s challenging about that challenge is a lot of these folks are pretty quiet. They’re isolated, maybe they’re a bit introverted and they don’t do a lot of personal branding, self marketing, etc. So from a sort of think about the thought leadership of each of the individuals that are in your network, how do you sort of scan the landscape to see, Ooh, somebody is out there that’s doing something interesting in whatever Internet of things or biotech or whatever?

Maxine Mackie I mean, we have a kind of a research team that docs a lot of this where we’re really looking at who’s talking about different things and in different conferences, who’s writing about things, who are referred to us. We often get really incredible referrals from our existing mates. I should say that we’ve got a very detailed onboarding process. There’s kind of a quite a few different hours we spend with. Each of our labelmates talking to them, really understanding how they cultivated their craft. And really.

Peter Winick I guess my point is, if somebody has got this deep expertise, some really cool thought leadership and they’re not writing about it and they’re not speaking about it and they’re not in the marketplace about it. You’re not going to find that right. Like, that’s kind of the point. And most of the folks that are doing that and I’m painting with a broad brush here. Most of the folks that do this type of work are not self-promoters. They’re not used to the spotlight. They’re not looking to get all this attention. They want the they’re kind of the shepherds of the ideas, but they don’t necessarily they’re not necessarily wired that way to be. Call it self-promotional, have a better word. But it’s a chicken and egg. But if they’re not, folks like you don’t get to see them. So they don’t get on to the cool project. So if you were if you were to think about someone’s out there were several people I hope out there listening today that fit into a potential thought leader that could work with you. But they’re not. They don’t know kind of what to do or how to do it. They’re not doing it enough. What might you advise them?

Maxine Mackie So for us, if they’re interested in what we do and being part of a global innovation expert network. So that could be anything from tech creative marketing leadership H.R. Really? Anyone trying to make progress happen, they can sign up through our label sessions and we the team, one of the team will kind of a reach out and talk to them and understand where their expertise lie. So that’s one way we get lots of people reaching out to us because we create a lot of content showcasing each of our individual kind of elaborate. So often people will come to us and anyone listening go to label sessions.com. You can kind of inquire what it means to be a label tonight, but that is because we really do believe in the power of the network. We get a lot of referrals from our existing label mates and that works really well, right? And I encourage that because you get a really great level of kind of insight and sometimes it’s really nice to group those people, you know, curated sessions together for.

Peter Winick I’m going to build on something you said earlier, which was sort of part of your superpower, is to be able to bridge and sort of translate various types of thought leadership from sort of the highly technical to the highly relevant from a business standpoint. I think that when you think about what is the business side of the House looking for, they’re looking to see the connection between whatever it is under the innovation umbrella that drives a business outcome, right? Is that part of your sort of superpower of translation to show them the either the cost of not doing or the benefit of doing?

Maxine Mackie Yeah. So that would be very much the same when you’re kind of shaping up a strategy, when you’re thinking about what right to play and like the client has in the space, part of that is like this is the cost of not acting as well as these are the opportunities if you do something. I think that’s but really what this highlights is in all the space, there’s very rarely one black and white answer for anything. And part of the power, I think leadership is being comfortable in having opposing views at the same time and working them through and the implications of them. The part of what we do if we’re running an accelerator is really call out. If we say proceed with this strategy, let’s call it, there were kind of implications to that. So let’s not be naive to them. These are some of the direct implications. If we go down this route, we might cut off opportunity X, we may not have a right to play in space, said.

Peter Winick So anything you would add to things that folks could do when creating for leadership? What I mean by this is very, very broadly speaking, there’s two ways to create thought leadership, right? Go off in isolation, lock yourself in a room or a hotel or whatever, you know, sort of the Walden Pond and go at it, right. You know, stock up with some coffee and, you know, 500 books and come up with some brilliant ideas, polish them up and then see if there are other ways to be collaborative on the front end. Right. Are you seeing the shift in which process is happening more often today or is more impactful or more successful?

Maxine Mackie Well, I could probably what I believe is most successful is far more in collaboration where it’s discussion of things. But I think I’m biased because I kind of believe in the power of networks. And what I see is when people with real domain expertise talk around the differences either in that industry or their specialism, That’s where I think a lot of new ideas really get born from or new thinking is you shaping it with somebody else. I think it works in isolation for something. So, for example, if somebody is becoming a thought leader in Gen I prompts, for example, what you need to do the work to really understand it. So to a certain degree you need to go and lock yourself in a room and go and really work through it for an event that I five That’s not.

Peter Winick For that, for that subset of what you add to polish up your project. Yes.

Maxine Mackie Yeah. And that’s, that’s a very kind of a, that’s a binary example. But really I think where the power comes from is the collaboration and discussion with other people. I also think that speaks to our human nature too. And you know, we’re more than the sum of our parts. So for me, I think I see more progress when people are in discussion and collaboration. I see that in the programs that we deliver, we never really if we’re curating sessions for somebody. So even in, say, leadership development, I know we curating lights, you know, five, ten different voices for them to talk to. I think it’s is always interesting when it’s a real mix of things because that’s where I think those connections really happen rather than just kind of a to always kind of a direct one to ones.

Peter Winick That makes a lot of sense. I mean, the other the other thing I was thinking, it is the risk of being in isolation too long is, you know, are you. Actually solving a problem that anybody thinks needs to be solved. Right. Because sometimes getting that feedback early on, hey, I’m thinking about writing comps that do X, Y or Z or whatever. We’re thinking about whatever. And here’s what I’ve done so far and so far doesn’t need to be 300 pages of heavy duty research. But give me the gist of the idea of what you’re trying to do and how you put that out there and get the feedback. And, you know, if the overwhelming feedback is okay, like, you know, it’s not. Wow, that’s interesting. Tell me more or when is that going to be done? You might want to reconsider. Is it worth the investment of another three months, six months, whatever of your life to polish it up? Not everything is worthy of polishing.

Maxine Mackie I think that’s maybe two things that I let very early on when I mentioned earlier being IBM and getting to work with their research labs around the world, they were all individual researchers in isolation and you could see that there wasn’t the connection to a lot of the challenges that IBM’s clients had at the time. So I was I mean, the young, really kind of ambitious, excited, full of ideas. And doing that translation job was really powerful for me and really formative in me. Think about how do you make progress happen. Yes. So that’s one part of it. I’ve seen that when that doesn’t really work. And the other side of it is if you are in isolation for too long, you can in your thought leadership, whatever area that is, you can get to a point of a level of expertise I’ve seen where it’s really hard to then translate that to different clients in different industries because you can be you can kind of galvanize your thinking as you kind of have reached this like apex of your thought leadership without being able to bring in the distinct challenges a particular organizer has. And I think having that bit of flexibility is really kind of important because for everyone, I think the only constant in our working life, our personal lives, is change. And that’s why I think you can always be striving for that, that, you know, the last 2% of perfection with thought leadership, but actually connect with others because that 2% is a moving target.

Peter Winick And I think that’s right. But I think that, you know, oftentimes many. Experts are perfectionists. Right? And they and there they put their name on it. They want to make sure it’s polished. It’s perfect, it’s thoughtful, it’s whatever. Which obviously is important. But there’s a time to be a little bit more lenient. Say, this is this is still in the formative stages. This is not definitive yet. So therefore might not be up to the standards of some of my other work or my published work or whatever the case may be. Right. Like a work in progress is not the same as a finished product.

Maxine Mackie But I think that what it’s like to be part of that kind of early access to it’s not polished yet, but this is what I’m thinking and it could be the kind of next frontier for me.

Peter Winick That’s very true. So any other final thought you have as we start to wrap up here? Anything else you’d like to share about your journey or what you’ve learned or anything along those lines?

Maxine Mackie Really learn around the power of network and really being so kind of energized by so many interesting people in the world doing really interesting things. And I’m a bit spoiled because I get to have great conversations with them all the time. I built the career I wanted, and it’s getting to connect with amazing people who have truly cultivated their craft. And my job is to kind of fit them into kind of projects, programs, curated sessions. But it’s a lovely thing to be an enabler of.

Peter Winick Courtney This I love it. I appreciate your time today and I appreciate the conversation. Thank you, Maxine. Appreciate it.

Maxine Mackie Pleasure. Thank you.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at Peter at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.