Design thinking has emerged as an important way for designers to draw on rich customer insights to enhance their products and services. However, design thinking is now also beginning to influence how corporate managers bring customer data into their day-to-day strategic planning. We call this integration of design thinking into the practice of strategic management “Design-Led Strategy” and show how it complements but extends current design-thinking perspectives. Adopting a strategy-as-practice perspective, this article identifies four archetypal practices that managers can use to strategize with design-thinking content. Its findings provide insight into the practices associated with situating design thinking within organizational practice.

Research Summary While the notion of ecosystems has become prominent in scholarly and practitioner strategy literature in recent years, more can be done to bridge these two communities. In this introduction to the SMS Collection, we interrogate strategy scholarship from the perspective of “ecosystem architects,” who are private or public sector actors interested in nurturing and developing a given ecosystem as a whole. In doing so, we collate and discuss key articles published in the journals of the Strategic Management Society which, considered together, shed new light on processes of ecosystem emergence and evolution. We distill a range of insights for ecosystem architect practitioners and outline four strategies for them to create conditions appropriate to their ecosystem and its stage of development. Managerial Summary What insights does strategy research offer to practitioners interested in nurturing the creation and ongoing development of a range of different types of ecosystems? In this introduction to the SMS Collection, we distill relevant findings and outline four strategies for public and private ecosystem architects to create conditions appropriate to their ecosystem and its stage of development. Specifically, we outline approaches to create conditions for coalescence, coopetition, cooperation, and contained contestation within emerging and evolving ecosystems.

Injectable insulin is an extensively used medication with potential life-threatening hypoglycaemic events. Here we evaluated silver sulfide quantum dots (QDs) with a chitosan/glucose (CS/GS) encapsulating polymer to produce an oral insulin nanocarrier (QD-INS-CS/GS). This formulation was insoluble at acidic-neutral pH, showed increased absorption in human duodenum explants and Caenorhabditis elegans; and was highly sensitive to glucosidase enzymes to mediate hepatic release. In C57BL/6J mice, 50% of QD-INS-CS/GS distributed to the liver and promoted a dose-dependent reduction in blood glucose. Compared to injectable insulin, QD-INS-CS/GS had a similar effect size and time-to-onset in non-obese diabetic mice and streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats without promoting hypoglycaemia or weight gain. Non-diabetic baboons showed a dose dependent-reduction in blood glucose up to 30% with 10 IU/kg in insulin tolerance testing. No biochemical or haematological toxicity, or adverse events were observed. These studies demonstrate the successful application of this oral insulin platform with inhibited hypoglycaemia.

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