This research and design project provides design leaders with a toolkit that aims to help them develop their leadership qualities. With the modern definition of a designer being in a transitional period where designers are transitioning on the spectrum of traditional designers and business executives (Muratovski, 2015), creativity is becoming a more desirable attribute with the increasing discourse around innovation (Rylander, 2009), it seemed like the right time to look at designers in leadership positions. This project was done through firstly developing strategies for managing the research-practice gap (Norman, 2010) in the project, after which these were combined with a grounded research approach (Martin & Turner, 1986). 22 interviews were done with practitioners. Temporarily shifting the perspective of design leaders on leadership styles was chosen as the design goal. A toolkit in the form of a card deck was developed and evaluated with the user-group. Recommendations to improve on the developed strategies are presented. The conducted research and developed strategies, regarding the research-practice gap, contributed to existing knowledge by showing how designers can manage the research-practice gap in their projects on a single project level. The conducted research, regarding design leadership, contributed to existing knowledge by assessing how designers experience, and fare in, leadership positions and providing a novel way for them to self-reflect and self-assess their leadership competencies. The project contributed to both in the way of bridging the gap by brokering leadership knowledge towards the design leadership practitioners through the designed toolkit. Further research should be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies in practice, and to further explore what designers could learn from the field of leadership.

This thesis report represents the result of a graduation project for the master programme Strategic Product Design at the Delft University of Technology in collaboration with the Digital division of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
This project aimed at changing the Organizational Culture of KLM Digital. This due to the perceived lack of innovation, especially radical innovation, coming out of KLM Digital. The current workflow helped create this issue by separating the divisions responsible for the development of digital products. The current setup is known as the Digital Factory, which is mainly focused on developing incremental innovations. The way the change was attempted was by changing the structures, processes and organizational identity. All of that by using design methodologies and practices.
The design proposal consists of two big elements: the Final Destination and the Runway. The first one includes a future vision representing a scenario where KLM Digital achieves the changes team members wanted to see. As part of this scenario, a new Organizational Identity was created. This new Identity aims to bring the team members together under a shared beliefs and values system, working towards Digital’s Vision. The Runway is the collection of actions that Digital can take in the short-term to kick start the change process. More specifically, the Runway includes a number of activities that promote collaboration, creativity and communication among the people of Digital. This way, the proposal covers actions the organization can take in the near future to start testing ideas and learning from them, and a long-term vision to work towards.