Kevin McCullah, the founder of the London-based product strategy consultancy company, Plan, looks at what it means to be a design leader. This slippery subject has no clear answer, yet the author comes up with ten different types of design leaders to illustrate what these important pathfinders in the design industry might look like.
'What the hell is Design Leadership anyway?' is what I keep hearing people mutter under their breath these days.
It has become one of those subjects that any player in design now has to have an opinion on, but debating it usually generates more heat than light, as self-anointed design leaders rehearse their personal or company agendas. Self-importance, not clarity, seems to be the main concern. At one level this isn't surprising. Leadership is a slippery topic these days: there are more books on Amazon attempting to define the mojo of leadership than that other holy grail, innovation.
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