New Study Finds Thought Leadership Highly Influences Big Companies’ Choice of IT Services Firms, Yet IT Services Firms Value It Far Less
Companies in 11 Industries Rank Such Content 3rd on Their Selection Criteria; IT Services Firms Believe Clients Rank It 8th.
HOPKINTON, MASS., USA AND NEW DELHI, INDIA (Nov. 19, 2025) – A much smaller percentage of IT services firms believe their thought leadership content plays a key role in attracting clients than the percentage of clients say themselves, a new study has found. The research suggests that many IT services firms vastly underappreciate the need to present differentiated expertise at a time when a proliferation of these firms makes it more difficult for their clients to tell them apart.
The study, by Buday Thought Leadership Partners and Curious Insights, found that IT services firms’ articles, research reports, conference presentations and other so-called “thought leadership” content highly or very highly influences the decisions of 79% of 200 executives in 11 industries (average company revenue was $11.7 billion). However, when asked the same question, only 59% of 300 IT services firms (average revenue of $2.6 billion) rated thought leadership content as having that degree of influence.
The research was conducted this spring and summer by Buday TLP, a thought leadership strategy and training firm, and Curious Insights, a global research and intelligence firm. It is the most extensive study to date on thought leadership in the global $1.7 trillion IT services industry. Their research report, “Outthinking the Competition: What the Best IT Services Firms Do Differently with Thought Leadership,” also featured the views of 20 executives in the IT services industry. They included the heads of thought leadership at Accenture, Ascendion, Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services, IBM, and Virtusa; clients of IT services firms; and experts on the IT services industry. The full study can be found here.
The surveys and interviews probed how clients decide on which IT services firms to use, how the firms organize and conduct thought leadership research (including how they use generative AI) and marketing, spending on thought leadership, and its impact on revenue.
Some of the biggest findings came from comparing the best IT services firms at thought leadership (a group we call “Leaders,” which were 12% of the 300 firms surveyed) with the least effective ones (“Followers,” which were 16% of the base).
Key Finding: Thought Leadership Beats Analyst Recommendations and Pricing
Of nine buying criteria, the executives who decide on which IT services firms to use cited thought leadership as the third most influential factor. It finished higher than the recommendations of IT analyst firms (which ranked seventh) and much higher than the price of a project (which finished last). In contrast, IT services firms rated thought leadership eighth, IT analyst firms’ recommendations fifth, and price third.
Thought Leadership as a New Competitive Playing Field
“Our research conclusively shows many IT services firms must significantly raise their thought leadership game if they want to break through the noise and get on the short list,” says Robert Buday, CEO of Buday TLP, a thought leadership strategy and training development firm. “If they can – and our research and experience show it takes time and programmatic effort – they will attract a bigger share of clients and position themselves to win bigger projects over even much larger competitors. But they need to invest purposefully in thought leadership, especially in how they conduct research, turn its output into content for marketing, sales and new services, and develop the skills of people who create and market their content. Merely spending more on thought leadership won’t increase their market authority and increase the return.”
“Competition in IT services has exploded and gone global since the start of the 21st century, and AI is poised to fuel a whole new set of competitors,” says study co-author Alan Alper. He was a key member of the thought leadership research and marketing team that helped Cognizant Technology Solutions increase revenue nearly sevenfold between 2007 and 2021, from $2.8 billion to $19.4 billion. “IT services firms, both old and new, must compete on thought leadership. To do this, they must build highly talented research, marketing and service innovation groups that collaborate closely to convey their firm’s best thinking and unique expertise.”
“Our study makes clear what I’ve learned about IT services firms since the early 2000s: bringing proprietary knowledge to market has become increasingly important, and a key source of that knowledge is primary research on the best practices of their clients,” says study co-author Manish Bahl, founder and CEO of research firm Curious Insights. “This new research demonstrates how crucial it is today for IT services firms to have rigorous thought leadership research processes that can unearth little-known but highly effective business practices for leveraging digital technology.”
Generative AI and Thought Leadership: The Best Largely Don’t Use It to Write Their Ideas
Given seemingly extensive use of generative AI to create marketing, sales, service and other content, the study asked IT services firms how they use it in thought leadership. Our findings: Across all survey respondents, 59% use it to write prose for research reports, white papers, blog posts and other content. But only about half the Leaders – 31% – of use it that way. They are more likely to use generate AI tools for secondary research: 47% do that today, and another 53% expect to do so by 2027.
In fact, in all but one of nine content development tasks, thought leadership “Followers” are more likely to use generative AI than Leaders. “AI can accelerate content creation,” says Bahl. “IT services firms that rely on AI to generate insights or craft an overall narrative on a topic makes it difficult to create truly unique content. Differentiated content is essential to making their content valuable to clients. The best firms use AI to process data, organize information and accelerate routine tasks. But they keep human expertise, original thinking and research rigor at the center.”
The Revenue Advantage: Leaders Invest 6x More and Reap Quantifiable Returns
Comparing the best with the least effective IT services firms at thought leadership led to seven key findings. The Leaders at thought leadership:
- Invest six times more on thought leadership and twice as much on research to develop compelling views. What’s more, Leaders spend 57% of their content budget on research, while Followers spend only 28%.
- Are much more likely to measure the revenue impact of thought leadership, and much more likely to believe it drives revenue.
- Have more rigorous processes for thought leadership research and are less likely to let generative AI do their thinking. The best IT services firms at thought leadership bring greater rigor to the research they conduct, especially in research design. Leaders also conduct more extensive marketing than Followers. And Leaders more often help business developers turn thought leadership messages into sales pitches.
- Have a higher number of senior management advocates of thought leadership in their firms, who get more involved in their thought leadership programs and more often view them as a competitive advantage.
- Collaborate more often with sales, marketing, and service innovation – functions that view thought leadership content as essential for creating demand (i.e., for marketing and selling services) and developing new services.
- Have higher-skilled thought leadership talent, and value research skills the most.
- Are more likely to centralize thought leadership to create consistently high-quality content, and to have it report above marketing, sales, and service innovation on the organization chart to avoid becoming captive their parochial demands.
On the study’s website, IT services firms and enterprise buyers can slice and dice the data (e.g., by company size or region). They can also take a brief benchmarking survey that compares them on several key dimensions with the “Leaders” in thought leadership.
Study Methodology
The research was conducted in the spring and summer 2025 with:
- 300 IT services firm executives worldwide (average firm revenue: $2.6 billion) responsible for thought leadership, marketing, strategy, and client delivery
- 200 enterprise executives at firms averaging $11.7 billion in revenue, involved in IT services vendor selection across 11 industries
- 20 in-depth expert interviews with heads of thought leadership at Accenture, Ascendion, Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services, IBM, and Virtusa; enterprise buyers; and industry experts
About the Partners
Buday Thought Leadership Partners LLC is a thought leadership assessment, strategy and training firm based in Hopkinton, Mass. Contact Bob Buday for more information: bob@budaytlp.com.
Alan Alper is an affiliate and formerly chief operating officer of Buday TLP. He was vice president of global thought leadership programs at Cognizant until 2022. He can be reached at alan.alper@gmail.com.
Curious Insights is a global research and intelligence firm specializing in thought leadership, brand perception, and market research. The firm has research and consulting professionals across India, the United States, and Europe. Contact: Manish Bahl at mbahl@curious-insights.com | curious-insights.com
Media Contacts
For interview requests, data clarifications or additional findings:
Robert Buday
CEO, Buday Thought Leadership Partners
Email: bob@budaytlp.com
Manish Bahl
Founder and CEO, Curious Insights
Email: mbahl@curious-insights.com
Outthinking the Competition 