Competing for Mindshare and Marketshare

I have made some comments about CNAS in the past, specifically noting the power of their new media strategy as they develop their brand as a new Washington based Think Tank. I think this comment by Matt Armstrong is a brief, well articulated way to highlight how their new media strategy is having impact on the think tank community in general.

As CNAS grows, it has redefined the think tank as it (cautiously or a bit clumsily) inserts itself into the public discourse of national security. From conferences broadcast on the web to Twitter to blogging, they have gone the route that sharing information is power. Their knowledge, publicly displayed, gains mindshare and marketshare. That is not to say other models are obsolete but the when the field has changed due to the strategy and tactics of an ideological competitor (and think tanks are ideological competitors) you may want to take notice.

When I went to Washington DC, I met with folks from three different Think Tanks and asked all of them the same question: How much value does this organization put into your work?

It is neither a rhetorical question nor meant to be an insult, because I know how much work goes into the development of even a single report produced. Rarely is any report the result of a single author, because there is an entire research staff behind the development of analysis, not to mention study and often travel involved. Beyond the money there is considerable intellectual energy expended in insuring quality and accuracy of information. Good research has costs well beyond the monetary value.

So how many people read a report produced at a Think Tank? I'm going to take a WAG that more people read Triage developed by CNAS than any other single national security report produced in 2009 by any Think Tank primarily because it was crowdsourced into the public through new media. The key question though is whether there is value in quantity of readers, or if there is a perception of quality that takes priority, or whether quantity ultimately leads to quality regardless of substance and that is what is most important? These are not easy questions to answer, although as I understand it many Think Tanks are privately funded, and quantity is one way to show tangible metrics as a result of work produced.