… in un articolo di Think Tanked : cambi nella leadership e nuove strategie comunicative.

[…] A new, often more diverse leadership is arriving in a rapidly changing think-tank environment. The policy field is more crowded, the flow of information is faster and the fundraising is tougher.

“It appears some think tanks are making choices based on politics and power rather than what is best for the institution,” said James McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

In some instances, formal transition processes carried on for six months or more, while other institutions seemingly changed overnight.[…]
Whatever leadership an organization ends up with, the question is whether those in charge can manage the changing think-tank world.

Arthur Brooks, who was just ahead of this recent influx of new leaders when he became president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in 2009 after Christopher Demuth’s tenure of more than 20 years, said communications will be the biggest challenge for new leadership.

“We all have to think more creatively about our audiences,” he said. “It’s not good enough to have a ‘Field of Dreams’ approach: Build it and they will come. They won’t come, because there’s too much noise in public policy today.”

AEI has invested millions of dollars and hired dozens of people, he said, to identify who it sees as its key audiences on Capitol Hill, in the media, business, academia and communities nationwide. The effort, he said, is aimed at “finding the most creative ways to get our research and ideas to these leaders so they are armed in the competition for better policy.”

“It is incredibly exhilarating and fun, and a new way of doing business for our scholars and staff,” Brooks said.

That new approach, combined with fewer financial resources and more competition from new organizations occupying space traditionally held by think tanks, could be contributing to the wave of retirements, McGann said.

“Tight economic times, costly technological requirements and challenges by organizations that look and act like think tanks are testing what the establishment think tanks do,” he said.