That is true.

One caveat, though: these people were all CEOs or senior consultants or occupying high level cabinet positions in federal and provincial governments (some were actually premiers). These people, if not "thought leaders" are certainly modelling themselves in that image and, perhaps worse, unlike "thought leaders" they are the people at the steering wheel of many important things -- they are leaders. One would hope they would be less suceptible to fads, but alas.

Think how difficult it would be for a young Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page to advance within that group of people. It would be impossible.

That's because these "elite" circles favor political skills, extroverted people with low conviction.

Peter Thiel points out that most original thinkers are introverted with high conviction, like Mark or Larry. That seems to be the formula for success in technology.

Yes, that is interesting thought; in fact, he even goes further and consider Aspergers as an advantage in this context.

This is more or less validated by the OCEAN/5 factor model -- low agreeableness and low extroversion might be proxy for not being influenced by the convention.

Social intelligence seems to be what's typically need to rise to the top of the management or political hierarchy, unlike intelligence as it would be defined here.I can't think of too many politicians I consider even remotely smart these days.

Perhaps "thought leader" is simply a misnomer.