I think the idea of looking for a leader is poorly constructed.
Different tasks can be approached with different structures, which also depends on the composition of the group. The kind of person to lead (or not to lead) the group effectively would vary greatly.
So how does it make any sense to pick a leader without knowing the context?
Have you worked through the entire context of this approach?
There was little reason for an 3rd party developer to spend resources to produce a Mac/Linux port during Windows' heyday. Except as a labor of love.
But Apple doesn't own 90% market share. It's split, and growing toward Android. There is no sensible reason for developers not to develop for BOTH platforms, until it is no longer profitable to do so.
That's exactly what I mean by slip through their fingers. It would be like Valve not picking CS. With Blizzard's considerable resources and, as they claim, freedom, they should have gone after hiring Icefrog and getting DOTA. If it's not in their DNA to make such a play work, well I think that factors into the larger point of them living in another age.
I want to also clarify that a lot of this rant is in the context of them trying to build out stuff like the UMS maps store for SC2 (or even putting in development time on their version of DOTA). To me, these are a fool's errand; pursuing them demonstrates that Blizzard doesn't understand _why_ UMS was so successful on their platform 15 years ago, and how the landscape has changed such that it no longer makes sense.
It's an incredible marketing message that may or may not be in line with what actually goes on internally.
Is it believable that they have more freedom to scrap, or extend projects? Certainly. But are there are also external forces to development that include things such as deadlines, and other timings? I would imagine so.
It's easy for us to think of companies as an unchanging abstraction, but in reality a company changes very much based on who is behind it. Blizzard in its heyday is not the Blizzard today. I feel like the company has lost some of its magic, and it's not even quite sure why.
The talent is very different since the industry has matured. Their projects are run by people from industry that have been able to deliver before (C&C:SC2, DoW:D3). I can understand the desire for a certain predictability when you are spending 100M+ on a title. But at the same time, the reality is that these people spent many years delivering mediocre titles. Contrast this approach with Valve, which routinely picks up brilliant, but risky, talent and IP. Today, they have picked up DOTA, possibly one of the biggest games of this decade, which has slipped either by ignorance or incompetence through Blizzard's fingers.
Blizzard has every right to rehash their older games. But in 15 years, we see sidegrades instead of evolution. Perhaps they are using 1997 as a reference point. When you release a product with the barebones featureset of BNET2, it would have been passable in 1997, but 2012 is different. The landscape has completely changed. Blizzard is no longer one of the few providers of a functional multiplayer experience - you can get any game you can think of in your browser, desktop, or console. They are no longer a big fish in a small pond, but just one fish in a large ocean. By their actions, I'm not sure they truly understand how dangerous their position is. It's understandable to miss the change in the environment, after all it has been slow, and masked by tremendous successes with WoW.
But the times have changed, and on their current path, they will miss the boat the next time someone eats their lunch.