Opening up for Thought Leadership

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a definition for thought leadership and research is based on first hand experiences from within Volvo Cars' YCC project, a project only amnned with women in leading roles, observational studies, and semi-structured interviews conducted during and after the project with team-members, managers and key partners. Playing Chinese Whispers is in a way what happens in any regular car project at any given automotive company today. The process flow for customer demands i.e. market input to make a full circle to the next generation cars completed and reaching the awaiting customers not only involves a multitude of players in the circle, garbling the message, it also is a procrastinate process altering the original message even further, a process valid for most industries. Valuedriven development, trust and collaboration together with co-creation and peer recognition propose enabling for thought leadership.