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Ed Dorrell

@Ed_Dorrell

Partner at Public First (education, strat comms and Labour). Quant, qual, political comms. Ex-journo. Occasional govt adviser.
London labourlist.org/author/e-dor/ Joined February 2009
2.9K Following 18K Followers 38K Posts

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Ed Dorrell @Ed_Dorrell
Today we launched the second phase of the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes. Incredible political and media buy-in.

But there's so much to do. No time to waste.

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
www.bbc.co.uk Society needs to act to help white working-class pupils, inquiry says The education secretary says she is backing the inquiry to "get to the heart of the barriers holding children back".
Ed Dorrell @Ed_Dorrell
This is 100 per cent right
Joe Hill Verified account @jo3hill Oct 18
AI is about to make 80% of corporate thought leadership worth almost nothing, and companies should either focus on the remaining 20% or decide not to pursue this form at all.

Language models are better placed to replicate the corporate voice tone than any other kind of writing. Lots of these papers deliberately didn’t contain anything controversial or new, because most firms are allergic to the idea of putting off any potential customers - reports are heavily caveated, use the passive voice a lot and designed to appeal to as many people as possible. As the cost of producing things like this has fallen to near zero, there will be a glut of it in the market and people will switch off and read none of it.

I think there are a few avenues worth exploring:
Ideas. The subjects most corporate thought leadership positions as new aren’t actually new, they’re worn out. But new ideas are always interesting - if they wouldn’t cause some people to disagree and be annoyed they probably aren’t new enough.
Genuine insights. Lots of companies are well placed to share insights from actual proprietary knowledge they have. The bar is high - if it includes the word “synergy” it probably isn’t a new insight.
Skin in the game. When companies are visibly making bets on x, not y, and explaining their rationale. I think the research that analysts at the big banks publish will still be interesting to people because at some level they are making predictions, and stand to make or lose money based on those.
Personality. The chief executives of many (not all) big businesses are charismatic and interesting people, but very few of them are trying to be actual thought leaders like eg Jamie Dimon. Many see this as risky, but we are interested what these people think and if they can capitalise on it they can be philosopher kings.

For many businesses, 1-4 won’t be feasible for internal political reasons, in which case it’ll be better to not do it at all than to do a bad version of it.
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