In September 2020, as governments poured billions into COVID-19 vaccine development, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla made a decision that baffled the industry. He turned down roughly $1.5 billion in R&D funding from Operation Warp Speed and invested Pfizer’s own money instead.

His reasoning, shared publicly, was simple. He wanted to free Pfizer’s scientists from the bureaucracy that came with government reporting requirements and keep the company out of politics.

A few years later, Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen appeared before the US Senate HELP Committee to answer why Americans pay $969 a month for Ozempic while Germans pay $59.

He could have delivered a carefully rehearsed defence of Novo Nordisk’s pricing. Instead, he pointed to the pharmacy benefit managers that retain 74% of what the company charges, the incentives that discourage lower list prices, and the broader dysfunction of a system where reducing prices can actually limit patient access. He explained the system instead of simply defending his company.

Both of these leaders took positions that carried professional and reputational risk. Yet, they chose transparency over corporate caution, which saw returns that no sponsored campaign could deliver.

And this is what thought leadership does when treated as a strategic investment rather than a communications exercise.

It builds more trust than marketing materials

According to the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, which surveyed nearly 3,500 management-level professionals across seven countries, 73% of decision-makers consider an organisation’s thought leadership a more trustworthy way to assess its capabilities than marketing materials or product sheets. That figure has risen steadily from around 59% in 2019.

Buyers want to understand how you think, not just what you sell. And organisations are struggling to meet that expectation, with only 15% of decision-makers rating the thought leadership they encounter as very good or excellent.

In regulated industries such as life sciences, healthcare, or medtech, where compliance reviews often smooth away distinctive perspectives, that gap is likely wider still.

It shapes buying decisions before sales conversations begin

Three-quarters of decision-makers say a piece of thought leadership prompted them to research a product or service they were not previously considering. Of those, 23% went on to do business with the company that published it.

And 86% say they would invite a company to participate in a request for proposal (RFP) based on consistent, high-quality thought leadership alone — even if that company had not previously been under consideration. Only 38% of organisations expect their content to have that effect.

For life sciences and medtech companies, where buying cycles are long, stakeholder groups are large and switching costs are high, this early influence matters disproportionately. The company shaping the conversation around an emerging challenge or industry bottleneck gets considered earlier and stays in the room longer.

It puts competitors’ relationships at risk

Thought leadership does more than attract new business. It can destabilise existing supplier relationships.

70% of C-suite executives say thought leadership from another company has made them question an existing supplier. More than half say it showed them that another provider understood their challenges better.

For organisations built on long-term partnerships and relationship-based selling — which describes most of life sciences — the implication is straightforward: if you are not publishing a defensible perspective on the problems your buyers face, someone else will.

It builds influence beyond customers

Strong thought leadership attracts collaborators, journalists, regulators and investors who recognise a perspective as credible and worth engaging with.

In regulated sectors, where trust compounds over time across multiple stakeholder groups, this creates a strategic advantage that advertising and product marketing cannot replicate.

“Our legal team will never approve an opinion.”

This is the objection I hear most often when working with life sciences companies on thought leadership. And it misreads what the work actually requires.

The constraint is having a position you can substantiate with evidence and defend publicly.

Bourla could explain why Pfizer declined government R&D funding because the rationale was clear — fewer reporting obligations, faster scientific decisions, independence from political timelines. Jørgensen could discuss pharmacy benefit manager rebate structures because the data was already on the public record.

In regulated industries, the high bar for evidence works in your favour. A well-supported position from a CEO or scientific leader carries more weight precisely because audiences understand what it took to get it approved. Most of that space is still unoccupied.

A long game

Thought leadership is rarely built through a single article, interview or keynote. It is really an ecosystem of sustained public perspectives, expressed consistently across different moments, formats and platforms — until a person or organisation becomes closely associated with a particular point of view.

It took years for Bourla and Jørgensen to build their credibility, through repeated, public, defensible positions on questions their industries were avoiding. The 60% of decision-makers who say strong thought leadership makes them willing to pay a premium are responding to exactly that kind of consistency.

If your organisation has expertise that matters to your field, can you afford to stay silent?

Mint & Berries helps life sciences companies develop and execute thought leadership strategies. See how I work →