Rob Cross recently posted a clear insightful view about “The Most Valuable People in Your Network.” In regards to building social capital, he illustrates the difference between quality and quantity. I won’t repeat the article here, but it goes without saying that the same approach applies to Key Opinion Leaders. At Lnx we often see KOL selection heavily slanted towards quantity. What do I mean by quantity? We see companies counting things and scoring things – counting the number of speeches, editorial boards, patents, clinical trials, and all manner of potentially valuable attributes. And while most people agree that quality outweighs quantity, it’s not so easy for people to agree on what the measure of quality is – so in the absence of a universal standard of value, we go back to easier metrics like counting and simple scoring.
I wholeheartedly agree with Rob’s view on the topic; Lnx even published a white paper on the subject quite a while ago (see “Quantity Does Not Equal Quality In Evaluating a Scientist’s Real Importance as a Key Opinion Leader“). Our whole raison d’etre is finding consistent standards of evaluating KOLs beyond simple scoring – we pile on the analysis and apply proprietary algorithms to take it up a few more notches. The vision is to more fully understand not just an individual’s value in terms of what they DO, but to more fully understand who they ARE and how influential they are in community and social capital. We derive key insights from their network and connected community; it’s the spaces between people that get really interesting.
A few companies understand what’s possible with this approach and are well ahead of their peers in developing KOL engagement strategies focused on finding a mix of people with good social capital. Most, however, are still counting…counting…counting…
