The Ideas Industry

In Daniel Drezner’s new book, The Ideas Industry, the ‘marketplace of ideas’ that might resemble an old-fashioned bazaar has evolved to become a modern money-funneling industrial juggernaut. The main argument in the book is that this industry “rewards thought leaders more than public intellectuals” for three reasons:

·      erosion of trust in prestigious institutions and professions

·      polarization of American society

·      growth in economic inequality

First, we need to define the two groups of people who peddle their wares. Drezner refers to public intellectuals as “professional secondhand dealers in ideas” (quoting Hayek), and their main function is to be critical of bad ideas. Drezner’s examples come from the world of public policy, one of his areas of expertise. Public intellectuals are particularly important “in democratic discourse, exposing shibboleths masquerading as accepted wisdom [and] point out when an emperor has no clothes.” Without such individuals, “it becomes that much easier for politicians or charlatans to advance an idea into the public consciousness, regardless of its intrinsic merits…”

The rising challengers are the thought leaders. Drezner describes the thought leader as “an intellectual evangelist”. They “develop their own singular lens to explain the world [and they] know one big thing and believe that their important idea will change the world.” Drezner compares these two groups to Berlin-esque foxes and hedgehogs, a distinction I’ve discussed in an earlier post. Drezner summarizes the two in the following way. “The former are skeptics; the latter are true believers… A public intellectual is ready, willing, and able to tell you everything that is wrong with everyone else’s worldview. A thought leader is desperate to tell you everything that is right about his own creed.”

Why are thought leaders (or hedgehogs) popular in this day and age? Drezner attempts to link this, oddly enough, to psychological factors and possibly intellectual laziness, however he is unclear as to why this is the case. He writes:

“The rise of thought leaders plays into how human beings are hard-wired to process ideas. A stylistic element that matters greatly for success in the modern Ideas Industry is confidence… human beings prefer confident predictions over probabilistic ones, even though all of the empirical evidence says that the latter approach yields better predictions and more resilient ideas… Thought leaders excel and public intellectuals suffer in projecting the supreme confidence that their ideas are absolutely correct. This confidence is cognitively satisfying to audiences; even critics of thought leaders acknowledge the seductiveness of their sales pitch.”

Are these assertions true? Do we value style over substance more so today than in the yesteryear? Is there something about the situation in the twenty-first century that makes this so? If trust in previously hallowed institutions is eroding, shouldn’t we be more distrustful of any confident hawker of ideas? Apparently not. Maybe once you stop listening to the established sources, you get lost among the cacophony of ideas. Perhaps it becomes more difficult to distinguish style over substance. A new upstart, gunning for recognition, needs to be loud and confident-sounding. I might call it arrogant. Someone else might call it charismatic. Has charisma become the leading requirement for leadership positions? I happen to think that integrity is a much more important characteristic; but I get the sense that this isn’t what gets one the kudos and the position of top dog. Sad, but likely true.

What else did I learn from Drezner’s book?

In a previous post, I highlighted the role of consulting firms in business fads. Drezner echoes the same concerns, but links the rise in private sector consulting to the same reasons why a thought leader might gain more traction than a public intellectual. McKinsey comes up in numerous examples, if I was name-dropping.  Drezner writes: “Thought leaders from the private sector are increasingly prevalent in prestigious conferences… Stylistically, the private sector is far better at conveying ideas than university professors or think tank fellows… excels at finding the one number, metric, or chart that will capture the attention of the audience… easier to understand and carry more heuristic punch. This does not mean that these ideas are necessarily correct…”

Being for-profit has further advantages. Drezner is preaching to my choir here; this is why I’ve become increasingly skeptical with such organizations. “[The] implicit inference that audiences draw… if someone is willing to pay for their services, they must have value… the proprietary information they gather and provide for their clients allows access to information that more traditional public intellectuals lack [and therefore] a decided edge in presenting arguments about how the world works… proprietary information also gives the private sector a justifiable excuse for opacity. Neither consultants nor tech firms will divulge all their data or methodologies, for fear of exposing their customers to unwarranted scrutiny. This obviously makes it easier for public audiences to cast a skeptical eye at their analysis and allege conflicts of interest. At the same time, however, it makes it impossible for outside observers to falsify their arguments.”

Another interesting analysis in the book: The challenges of being a thought leader and trying to maintain ‘top dog’ status. His examples are Fareed Zakaria, Niall Ferguson and Thomas Friedman. Competition is stiff, and staying on top is akin to running the hamster wheel. As the global economy becomes more interconnected, a superstar economy has emerged in the Ideas Industry. Drezner writes: “Becoming a thought leader now is almost like making it as an entertainer or entrepreneur. The rewards at the top are lucrative… enticing enough to warp the incentives of new entrants into the Ideas Industry…” and quoting Justin Fox: “the result is an intellectual environment that seems to increasingly reward the superficial, and keeps rewarding those who make it into the magic circle of top-flight speakers even if they don’t have anything new or interesting to say.” Drezner also reflects on his own role in the Ideas Industry and the challenges of navigating between the roles of thought leader and public intellectual, as he has his feet and fingers in both worlds.

Drezner is a good writer and his prose is quotable, hence the many examples I have included in this blog post. As to his thesis, I find his examples interesting, but the theoretical framework seems elusive. The best quote comes in a section discussing Clayton Christensen’s gospel of innovative disruption and subsequent challenges by Jill Lepore and Andrew King/Baljir Baatartogokh. The best quote is by King: “A theory is like a weed. Unless it is pruned back by empirical testing, it will grow to fill any void.” That’s something I can relate to as a scientist and theorist.