This article examines how Siemens's molecular imaging group incorporated design thinking principles into R&D to regain market leadership. Marked departures from its past practice included a "universe of possibilities" for lifetime customer value; multi-iteration "leapfrog concepting" ahead of prototyping; and adherence to an "innovation metric" that enabled simultaneous consideration of customer value and business cost. These elements gave rise to a dynamic capability, "creative forbearance," which supported the innovation team's unbridled creativity while building in patience for introducing new features to its product platform. This case illustrates how design thinking can be integrated in settings replete with technological and customer complexity.

The increasing adoption of more open approaches to innovation fits uneasily with current theories of business strategy. Traditional business strategy has guided firms to develop defensible positions against the forces of competition and power in the value chain, implying the importance of constructing barriers rather than promoting value creation through openness. Recently, however, firms and even whole industries, such as the software industry, are experimenting with novel business models based on harnessing collective creativity through open innovation. The apparent success of some of these experiments challenges prevailing views of strategy. At the same time, many of these experimenters now are grappling with issues related to value capture and sustainability of their business models, as well as issues of corporate influence and the potential co-option of open initiatives. These issues bring us back to traditional business strategy, which can offer important insights. To make strategic sense of innovation communities, ecosystems, networks, and their implications for competitive advantage, a new approach to strategy--open strategy--is needed. Open strategy balances the tenets of traditional business strategy with the promise of open innovation.

This note provides an overview of fiscal-policy tools and how fiscal policy influences GDP through the income multiplier. The mechanics behind the income multiplier are explained and an algebraic derivation is provided. The note also provides examples of how parameters associated with disposable income (e.g., the tax rate and marginal propensity to consumer) influence the magnitude of the income multiplier.

This note provides a summary of the primary fiscal and monetary policies. It also provides a matrix of the expected effects on GDP and interest rates when these policies are enacted simultaneously.The matrix reflects the interactions of the policy mix when both policies are expansionary and contractionary, and when one is expansionary and one is contractionary.

The objective of this note is to provide an overview of monetary policy tools and the primary policy objectives. The mechanics behind the money multiplier are explained, and an algebraic derivation is provided. The note also provides examples of how parameters associated with the money multiplier influence its magnitude, including the propensity of the public to hold currency relative to demand deposits and the propensity of banks to hold reserves relative to demand deposits. The companion exercise allows students to walk through the mechanics of expansionary monetary policy.