On Leadership: Bob Jerrard

Leadership
Bob Jerrard

Leadership is difficult to define but always involves both flexibility and anticipation; for a small company this can be inside or outside its management structure. Perhaps we all would prefer to work inside where leadership chimes with management. Both work place conflict and interesting academic discourse develop when they don’t.

Leadership in small design-based companies, where every employee takes a keen interest in the new products the company is developing, centres on the life of those products rather than on the insider management process. From researching risk in such companies I’m struck by the lack of management that product innovation actually has. I’ve noticed through interviewing whole companies that everybody appears a design expert, with preferences, criticisms and detailed knowledge of current projects. By focusing on innovatory projects, it is in everybody’s interest to share optimistic risk, as marketplace failure will equally affect all in the company.


• Is it naïve to assume that products of aesthetic design can provide leadership?

• How can the intrinsic motivation of ‘the very new’ be acceptable to the boardroom?

If companies reflect society then these questions are not naïve. Our lives revolve around gadgets, devices and services, which we all say are ‘brilliant!’ and we all have an expert eye on what is available to purchase, their benefits and comparative values.

It is clear that creative people and their style with a company can also be leaders; idiosyncratic behaviour is often admired where we are faced with ever-increasing use of detailed risk assessment. This is because products that are developed from designers’ ideas require many other skills to bring them to market.

Novelty in lifestyle is often viewed as synonymous with equally novel commercial activities. Much has been made recently of the legitimate development of new ‘class divisions’ in society, in particular the growth of city-based creative classes. These represent the development of new partnerships between previously distant individuals, for example between artists and technologists in the development of new products and services. At the heart of these ventures is what might be called the production of ‘thought’ leadership, that is, new associations of ideas, which represent for those involved, a collective challenge to the status quo. This used to be seen in company design offices, where the designer (the only employee allowed office plants and the radio on all day) naturally set out to form eclectic partnerships within the company because their role was uniquely, a future one.

Management and conformity are an old married couple whilst organisation and creativity often are seeking to elope in order to find a lasting partnership. If a company wishes to compete for innovative management reputation they might first seek out their creative class and allow it to contribute to its strategic leadership. I believe that leadership through designed products and their designers can provide good lessons in risk management for all small companies.

______
Bob Jerrard is the Emeritus Professor in Design in Design Studies at Birmingham City University, Institute of
Art and Design. His PhD and early work as a research fellow at the Royal College of Art centred on the specific problems faced by technology users in the creative industries. He has published widely on theoretical and social aspects of design. He is a fellow of the Design Research Society, an associate editor of the Design Journal, a member of AHRC’s Peer Review College and a research consultant for several UK universities, EPSRC and international publishing groups.