The service sector is now the dominant part of many western economies – and seems to be growing in importance. To differentiate their offerings, service providers need to be innovative to meet conscious and unconscious user needs. The innovation process to improve and redesign the way organizations deliver services demands collaboration from multiple sources, of which two are competence in design and in strategic leadership. The variety of services offered in the market raises cross-functional internal and external service leadership issues. How businesses understand and organize design activities can have a profound impact on the innovation process and outcome. Organizational leaders are often not designers. However, they are part of the design and innovation process in creating the vision and by making design-related decisions to obtain the envisioned future. The emergence of the service economy calls for rethinking within leadership. Thus, the term service design leadership is introduced in this paper to reflect a new attitude towards leadership in the service economy in response to the characteristics of services.
