Entrepreneurial Leadership by Design - The Role of Design in Socio-Economic Innovation

The case for this PhD by published work is based on reflection on eight years’ reflective practice research into the role of design in entrepreneurial leadership. Specifically, it explores a strategic design approach to socio – economic innovation. It is the culmination of a thirty-year longitudinal study at the interface of leadership, enterprise, innovation and development within the particular challenging environment of the Northern Ireland conflict. One important lesson from the author’s experience of societal crisis has been the pivotal role of innovation in socio - economic regeneration. External environmental pressures are forcing organisations to develop new approaches to cope with uncertainty. These circumstances call for leaders who can innovate whilst navigating complexity. Against this context the research considers entrepreneurial leadership and understands this to be more than the sum of entrepreneurship and leadership but a new phenomenon leveraged in response to the current climate. The focus is on entrepreneurial leadership, strategic design and open innovation as transformational drivers for socio-economic value creation. The study involves a design-led approach that maps transformational drivers against triple helix challenges, to provide a new perspective on the generative role of design. It synthesises organising frameworks that further highlight how entrepreneurial leaders build relationships for developmental innovation. These model the interplay between transfiguring and threshold concepts to yield guiding principles for entrepreneurial leadership practice. They represent antecedent factors for a prospective theory of Design Dynamics. The distinct contribution is an original contextual framework that provides insight into how entrepreneurial leaders employ design to realise innovation. Further, this builds on the extant body of knowledge through the hypothesis of a potential Design Dynamics theory as a support structure to explain and guide entrepreneurial leadership within complex environments. Future research will explore the nature of this structure so that it is applicable to new entrepreneurial contexts