In the 'new' economy, creativity is bought and sold as a commodity, rather than as a competence. Larger dot-coms look around for new products or services that will help them stay competitive. Thus gaining by ownership the advantage of being leading edge without the capacity to be leading edge. I would like to suggest another alternative. That is to create a culture of design within organizations and to create a new leadership competency based on design capacities.
Good leaders are designers.
Leadership as a designed outcome is a composition of interactions among human beings who are intentional in their approaches to change. This composition is a rich mix of systemic relationships in alignment with guiding purposes, which makes it distinct in every way from the types of leadership that are vision driven. There are two approaches to vision leadership and related roles that appear to be diametrically opposed to each other, yet both are based on the same category of relationship i.e. hierarchy. Leadership has been studied extensively concerning whether leadership skills are genetic or acquired and what checklist of skills is required to be a leader. Leadership as a relationship-based attribute is founded on both systems thinking and design action.