Before 2015, the think tank business was highly profitable. Most contracted with large organizations that provided enough funding for dozens of people to think about just one thing for many years.
“Those days are gone,” says Sheila Landsdowne, founder of Landsdowne Thinkables. “Today if people pay you to think, they want you to think about more things faster, and for less money.”
That, she says, is why nearly 500 discount think tanks have opened in the US. Together, they’re thinking about 450,000 things – spending an average of just 14 think-hours per topic.
Landsdowne spent 15 years thinking at Washington DC’s Unlimited/Unlimited. Confidentiality agreements prevent her from talking, though she says, “If it got out about one thing I thought about, the way we eat licorice would become obsolete.”
By 2015, says Landsdowne, clients were demanding more. When she was given only two hours to think about what she considered an important silicone-based topic, she decided she might as well work for herself. Within a week she’d hired three part-time thinkers and rented space above a barbershop in Moline, Illinois.
“Our first client wanted us to think about spark plugs, she says – which they did for two days, receiving $275. Today Landsdowne is operating 32 branches with 650 thinkers thinking about 1,945 things. One branch, Duluth, is thinking about 217 things alone – ranging from balancing predictability points in nuclear reactors, to the best methods of poking an extra hole in a belt.
Meanwhile, big think tanks like Unlimited/Unlimted – are struggling to keep up with their discount competitors.
“Last I heard,” says Landsdowne, “they were thinking about ginger ale cans.”
