About Bob Buday
Since the late 1980s, Bob Buday has been regarded as a pioneer in the theory and practice of thought leadership — well before the concept became widely adopted and loosely interpreted. He and his team at his new firm, Buday Thought Leadership Partners LLC, collectively bring decades of experience in helping business-to-business companies become widely recognized and richly rewarded for their expertise.
Over the years, Bob has become one of thought leadership’s recognized statesmen. From two decades of co-leading Bloom Group, he became a trusted advisor and confidante on this topic to organizations (for- and non-profit), executives and professionals hoping to bring their expertise to a wider audience and gain business as a result. Bob’s timeless approaches for developing and marketing compelling content have been cited and adopted by numerous firms.
At Bloom Group, he helped his clients develop and publish dozens of opinion articles in the world’s most prestigious business and management publications: Harvard Business Review (including this cover article), Forbes, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and others. He also helped clients publish two bestselling books, Monetizing Innovation (by Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke of Simon-Kucher & Partners) and Mighty Midsized Companies (by Robert Sher of CEO to CEO).
Bob is also a teacher who has been generous in sharing his advice to peers and newcomers alike. He has been a featured presenter at conferences (including this one, which was video recorded).
Back in 2005, Bob conducted the first research on thought leadership best practices. He developed the first seminars on thought leadership (with the Association of Management Consulting Firms) in the 2010s, before co-launching the first conference on the topic (“Profiting from Thought Leadership”) with Rattleback in 2016.
Bob was lead author on one of the first books on thought leadership marketing (Thoughts on Thought Leadership), a compendium of Bloom Group’s writings from 1998 to 2008.
Bob’s Foundational Experience
Bob gained his formative footing in thought leadership marketing during his 10 years at the management consulting firm CSC Index (1987-1997). At that firm, he was a key part of the marketing team that brought the blockbuster consulting service of “business reengineering” to prominence, which elevated annual revenue from $40 million to more than $200 million in six years.
After leaving CSC Index, Bob co-founded Bloom Group with Bernie Thiel. The firm provided thought leadership strategy, content development and marketing services to such companies as Deloitte, Accenture, EY, Microsoft, CSC, AlixPartners and a range of smaller B2B firms. After Bernie and another partner left to start their own firm, Bob launched the second version of Bloom Group in 2009, expanding his client base to include Tata Consultancy Services, Simon-Kucher & Partners, CEO to CEO, EastNets, EYP Architecture & Engineering, and FMG Leading, among a number of consulting, IT services, software, training and development, architecture and other firms.
He advises clients on how to create thought leadership strategies, develop compelling content, and attract a large audience to that content. He also has helped several clients conceptualize, develop and publish books. He has been lead researcher on six thought leadership marketing studies over the last ten years.
Before launching his career in thought leadership marketing in 1987, he was a business journalist for eight years at the Orange County Register (Calif.), InformationWeek, and Miramar Publications. Bob has a BA degree in communication studies from Penn State University.