I agree, and my "favorite" title is Thought Leader.
In my experience, people who call themself leaders, are often not performing very well in their main role, which usually happens to that of a people manager.
>Is thought leader the next evolutionary level of the "idea guy"?
With 40 years and counting in this particular sub-field of anthropology, it's been fully confirmed that the so-called "Thought-Leader" (Ignoramus Rex) does not fall within the evolutionary branch of the now-extinct "Idea" man (Traumus Pieintheskii) whatsoever.
On the contrary, Ignoramus has now been shown to be an evolutionary dead-end that arose from lower-intelligence forms than those which gave rise to Traumus. As we have seen from intact specimens, Ignoramus is simply not capable of achieving the level of sophistication in its natural environment as Idea Man once exhibited during the brief epoch when it was thriving.
Yes, I would say so, nice observation.
I also think that many "idea guys" are doing the performative role of "the leader", i.e. the idea guys doing the corporate/business drag of the "thought leader".
It's a horrible suggestion that everyone is going to have to pretend to agree with whatever nonsense that person has hyped themselves up on that week and they'll bully people into doing so.
Whereas Linux Torvalds is a leader by default because he had to be. There's also no need for him to say it anywhere. He just did it and was it.
In the case of Linus Torvalds and others like Guido van Rossum, I think is fine to consider them leaders, because they are leading their projects - to a certain extent these projects are not theirs (only) anymore, nonetheless they IMO they can claim or get the leader title.
Executing them on the otherhand, that's hard, and well - it's is the only thing that matters.