Beedie School of Business News

On February 6, a wine and cheese gathering was held to get our teachers involved in creating a vision for the Beedie School’s new Teaching and Learning Group. There was a great turnout, with 22 people in attendance. Shauna Jones, Coordinator of the Teaching and Learning Group, gathered input on the following questions:

1. What would you envision for the Beedie School’s Teaching Group for the next three years?
2. What do you want from the teaching group?
3. What initiatives would best support your needs?

From the input gathered at the initial kickoff, a draft of the Teaching Groups Vision and Mission statement was formed:

Vision
The international business education community will recognize the Beedie School of Business Teaching and Learning Group as a leader in engaged and experiential learning.

Mission
We are committed to the collective and individual development of scholarly teaching within the BSB. We engage faculty and students to foster effective outcome-oriented learning environments. We model and share successful scholarly best practices that encourage great students.

For now, these are considered “draft” statements. Try them on and see how they fit. If you have comments or suggestions, please submit them to shaunaj@sfu.ca. Representatives from the Teaching and Learning Group will also be soliciting feedback from students before the statements are finalized.

The input from the kickoff also demonstrated several key themes about what teachers want: opportunities to learn with and from others, opportunities for teaching development, and opportunities to share with others. There were some great ideas about how this might be accomplished. It was decided to start this year with interactive sessions and expand the offerings next year. Mark your calendars for the upcoming sessions in 2012:

Interactive Polling – May 24 from 2:30-4:30pm
Language and Writing – October 2 from 10am-12pm

If you are interested in the full results from the kickoff session, they can be found here.

To ensure our 2013 offerings are pertinent to our teachers, your input is needed. Please take five minutes to complete the following survey. Teaching Survey. Please use your regular SFU login ID and password to access the survey. It will remain open until May 31.

The Teaching and Learning Group is open to all Faculty members, Sessionals and others who are teaching. Your participation is a valuable asset in bringing to life the vision for the Beedie School’s Teaching and Learning Group.

Tags: Teaching, Teaching and Learning Group, Teaching News

by David Rubeli, Educational Consultant

SFU Symposium on Teaching and Learning
Beedie will be well-represented at this year’s Symposium on Teaching and Learning, which takes place at SFU Burnaby on May 16-17. The theme of this year’s conference is Leading Change @ SFU, and sessions will explore ways to improve student learning experiences in courses and programs. Several sessions will cover topics of interest to Beedie faculty members and staff, including addressing student work experience, health promoting classrooms, leadership identity development, and empowering Generation 1.5 and EAL students.

Consider supporting our Beedie colleagues who will be presenting:
• Andrew Gemino will facilitate an interdisciplinary plenary discussion on “Practicing Engagement”.
• Jan Kietzmann, who will participate in a panel discussion about upper-division cohort programs, along with SFU Surrey faculty leaders of the innaugeral Semester in Innovation cohort program.
• Stephanie Bertels and colleagues from Geography and Chemistry, will engage in a dialogue about the idea of engaged scholarship and how they use this pedagogy to achieve education for sustainable development.

In addition, Julia Christensen Hughes, Dean of the College of Management and Economics at the University of Guelph, will deliver the opening keynote address. Dr. Christensen Hughes’s talk will draw on research and insights from higher education reform initiatives in Ontario to discuss external influences and economic pressures facing universities in Canada and systemic barriers to change that SFU and other institutions must confront.

For more information about the Symposium or to register, visit the TLC website. The keynotes addresses and plenary sessions will be recorded and resources will be archived for those unable to attend.

Consultation Services
David Rubeli is the Beedie School of Business Educational Consultant. If you are working on an aspect of your teaching, revising a course or program, or pondering a big question or issue related to business education, David would be pleased to hear from you and happy to consult. You can reach him at 778-782-2278, drubeli@sfu.ca or @drubeli on Twitter.

Tags: SFU Sumposium on Teaching and Learning, Teaching, Teaching News

Jan Kietzmann in the Beedie School of Business, was a co-applicant with Ted Kirkpatrick (Applied Science), John Bowes (FCAT) and Rob Cameron (Applied Science) for one of SFU’s newest teaching grants. They have been awarded the $10,000 large teaching grant, which will be used to support and develop a project titled “Designing SFU Mobile”. SFU Mobile will be a 15-credit, cohort based, multidisciplinary course to be offered at the Surrey campus in Summer 2012. It will be co-taught by Faculty from Business, Computing Science and Interactive Arts and Technology and will draw students from those majors.

The course design draws from the successful model of SFU’s Semester in Dialogue program but adds new elements. Where the Dialogue program emphasizes dialogue as a field of study and practice in its own right (students enrol in DIAL courses), SFU Mobile will emphasize the skills students have learned in their respective disciplines, demanding that they coordinate their talents with other specialists in service of a larger goal, receiving 400-level credit in their own department. SFU Mobile will also emphasize product development, delivering road maps, concept demonstrations, and business plans.

The distinctly different intent of SFU Mobile, its heterogenous participants, its aim of building on and polishing the disparate disciplinary skills of the participating students, will require developing a distinctly different structure and outcomes than have been used for the Semester in Dialogue. The Teaching and Learning Development Grant is crucial for this process. Critical is the hiring of an inquiry team (different from the teaching team) to help facilitate development of the original learning outcomes, and independently evaluate the success of both the course activities and the stated learning outcomes. During the actual course, the inquiry team will maintain some distance from the instructors. This will allow the inquiry team to maintain a disinterested perspective on the decisions of the instructional team. It will also be important in sustaining the students’ confidence that they can express concerns to the inquiry team without any affect on their relationship to the instructional team and their ultimate grades. After the course is concluded, the instructional and inquiry teams will collaborate to evaluate the course.

About Teaching & Learning Grants
These grants were created to recognize teaching development as scholarly activity and to stimulate the development, implementation, and investigation of innovative teaching and learning at SFU. Learn more about these grants and how you can apply at: http://www.sfu.ca/teachlearn/tlgrants.html

Tags: Jan Kietzmann, SFU Mobile, SFU Semester in Dialogue, Teaching, Teaching and Learning Grant, Teaching Development, Teaching News

For many people, the notion of investing in a business involves an eventual return of capital and ultimate profitability. However, financial gain was the last thing on the mind of Beedie School of Business lecturer and PhD student Adam Mills when he made his latest investment in BBA student projects – ultimately leading to funds raised for children with chronic illnesses and disabilities.

In his Business 478 strategy class, Mills tasked his students with starting up their own businesses. He gave five groups of undergraduate students $100 each from his own pocket as start-up capital in exchange for 15 percent of each business, and told the students they could keep any additional profit.

Mills decided early in the process that hands-on experience was a more engaging way for the students to learn about business strategy than the traditional approach of writing a business plan as a capstone project. Keep reading…

Tags: Adam Mills, Business Strategy, entrepreneurship, Fruit Dealers, PhD

New marketing research from SFU professor Leyland Pitt, focused on the relationship between luxury wine branding and social media, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper prize for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

The article, entitled “Luxury wine brand visibility in social media:  An exploratory study” and published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, garnered the top billing as part of the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Pitt, a professor of marketing at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, co-authored the paper with Mignon Reynecke, a PhD student at the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden, and Pierre Berthon of Bentley University in Boston. The article was chosen following consultation amongst the journal’s editorial team, made up of eminent academics and industry leaders. According to Emerald Group Publishing, it was selected as “one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2011.”

In the paper, Pitt and his colleagues set out to address the visibility of luxury wine brands in the social media environment, in particular the Bordeaux first growth brands. They explained that the Bordeaux wines were used because, given their retail price, reputation and rarity, they “epitomize not only luxury wine brands, but also luxury brands in general… they are the kinds of brands that legends are made of.”

They gathered social media data on the five Bordeaux first growths from the website How Sociable, comparing overall visibility scores and  visibilities in 32 different forms of social media. Ultimately, they focused on the brands’ visibility and intersection with “the most important and most relevant social media” such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning and Digg.

Perhaps surprisingly, they found that that some of the luxury brands considered did not, at the time the data were gathered, have a clearly defined social media strategy.

That lack of focus in the social media environment may not last for long, however. According to the researchers, there are opportunities moving forward for luxury wine brand managers to use social media as a tool in their marketing strategies. They note that some threats may exist to these brands should they take a laissez faire approach to social media, particularly given the rise of social media’s influence and credibility among consumers.

“Social media are now as influential, if not more so than, conventional media,” they said. “This has a massive impact on brands.”

To this end, luxury marketers in the wine space will need to give serious consideration to every social media tool at their disposal.

“Astute wine brand managers will define the social media that they care most about,” say the researchers. “Brands can take directions in social media that would have been unlikely if not impossible just five years ago. Brand managers will not fully be able to control the destinies of these brands, but at least they should still be part of, and ideally, direct the conversations that occur around their brands.”

In addition to the Outstanding Paper Award, the article was also selected as the best paper of the year in International Journal of Wine Business Research.

Further information about the research can be viewed at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1912147

For more information about the Emerald Literati Network’s Awards for Excellence, visit www.emeraldinsight.com/literati

Tags: Bentley University, Bordeaux, branding, Digg, Emerald Group Publishing, Emerald Literati Network, Facebook, How Sociable, International Journal of Wine Business Research, Leyland Pitt, LinkedIn, Literati Network Awards for Excellence, Lulea University of Technology, luxury marketing, Marketing, Mignon Reynecki, Ning, Pierre Berthon, social media, Twitter, wine, wine research, YouTube

A Beedie School Teaching and Learning Group Event

Would you like to learn more about interactive polling and ways to use classroom response systems to engage with your students and to informally assess their learning? Are you curious about Poll Everywhere and how colleagues at Beedie have been experimenting with it over the last year?

Shauna Jones, Andrew Gemino and David Rubeli will be co-hosting a session on May 24 (from 2:30-4:30pm) to explore best practices from the first phase of the Poll Everywhere pilot project in the B.BA program. The session will review the goals and outcomes of the pilot project, introduce the basics of interactive polling pedagogy and Poll Everywhere, and feature discussion and dialogue amongst Beedie faculty who have been experimenting with Poll Everywhere over the last year. David will present an analysis of some quality assurance data that he and Andrew Gemino collected in BUS 201 last fall. Andrew Gemino will present some proposed options for expanding the Poll Everywhere pilot project in 2012/13 and solicit feedback from the group to inform his decision-making on how best to move forward.

For more information and to pre-register for this session please contact shaunaj@sfu.ca.

For a brief look at how interactive polling is already being used in Beedie:

A pair of students at Simon Fraser University has cooked up an idea that may help more immigrant women land jobs – and give profile to their cultural cuisine.

Fusion Kitchen’s goal is to develop the transferable skill sets, work experience and self-confidence of recent female immigrants through teaching ethnic cooking classes focused on dishes from their culture.

Chantelle Buffie and Sonam Swarup, both actively involved with Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) Simon Fraser, decided to start their own social venture and hosted a pilot project for Fusion Kitchen in December featuring a Fijian teacher. Keep reading…

Tags: Chantelle Buffie, entrepreneurship, Fusion Kitchen, SIFE, Sonam Swarup

VANCOUVER– A ranking of international business schools has rated the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University as among the best in the world for business and management research.

The measure, published by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a leading repository of business academic papers, shows that based on article downloads by institution, Beedie ranks 54th in the world out of more than 1000 business schools included in the survey.

According to Beedie School of Business Dean Daniel Shapiro, the school’s ranking can be attributed to the Beedie faculty’s prolific output, which focuses on key strategic areas such as innovation and technology, sustainability, international business and capital markets.

“This ranking is yet another measure that highlights the significant impact of our research,” said Shapiro. “It is a testament to both the breadth and depth of our faculty’s research output that we are able to rate so highly.”

SSRN was established in 1994 by Michael Jensen, a financial economist at Harvard Business School. In a 2008 New York Times profile, SSRN was held up for being “increasingly influential” in academic circles. According to the article, “With a precision common to the digital age, its rankings of downloads can be sliced and diced in many ways with only a click: most downloads over all or most downloads in the last 12 months, either by article, by author or by institution.”

The rankings can be viewed online at: http://hq.ssrn.com/rankings (free registration required)

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Tags: capital markets, Daniel Shapiro, entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School, innovation, international business, Michael Jensen, MIS, New York Times, social entrepreneurship, Social Science Research Network, SSRN, sustainability, technology

Submitted by Salina Siu, National Director of Communications, AIESEC Canada

VANCOUVER– Students around the world will be putting business theories into practice during AIESEC’s Global Public Relations Conference held on April 23 to 26, 2012. The international conference will be hosted in eight different countries, with AIESEC SFU being the host for North America. The event takes place in downtown Vancouver at SFU’s Segal Graduate School, sponsored by the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.

The international conference is an opportunity for students to gain a greater understanding of branding issues facing global organizations such as AIESEC, a student organization present in over 110 countries with its headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The four-day event will involve different student perspectives as they discuss long-term brand management strategies for AIESEC.

Vancouver will be welcoming delegates who are traveling from Toronto, Saskatchewan and Seattle, while others across the continent will be attending virtually. These delegates will be working online with seven other hubs around the world to develop long-term communication plans for different AIESEC regions, including Cambodia, Germany, Kenya and Brazil.

“Organizing the North American hub allows AIESEC SFU to represent SFU Beedie in a global discussion with the knowledge we have gained through our education,” says third-year marketing undergraduate student, Tamara Hombrebueno. “This event is an opportunity to engage with student leaders around the world and the outcome will impact students on an international level.”

AIESEC is the world’s largest student run organization, engaging student leaders through global internships and global community development opportunities. By focusing on youth leadership development, AIESEC offers the chance for students to participate in meaningful experiences abroad in a global learning environment. For more information on AIESEC, visit www.aiesec.ca.

Contact:
Salina Siu
National Director of Communications, AIESEC Canada
salina.siu@aiesec.net

The Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University is hosting some of the world’s foremost experts in the areas of entrepreneurship and social capital at the Segal Graduate School in downtown Vancouver this week at a special academic conference.

Entitled Social Capital and Entrepreneurship: Catalyst or Retardant?, the two-day event takes place on April 20 and 21, bringing together outstanding international and Canadian scholars. They will workshop a series of interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed manuscripts on the relationship between various form of social capital and entrepreneurial activity in commercial, social and cultural contexts.

Social capital represents the value that is embedded in relationships among people and networks. “This is a topic that is of interest to practitioners and scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship, organizational theory, and many of the social sciences,” said Beedie School of Business Professor and event chair Eric Gedajlovic. “This week’s conference highlights the impact the Beedie School has made in this area in terms of both research publication but also collaboration with other business schools globally.”

Topics covered will include access to financial resources in entrepreneurial settings, entrepreneurial and alliance networks, and social capital in the context of start-ups as well as institutional development.

Working papers to be presented have been selected through a highly competitive review process by reviewers and editors of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ET&P), one of the leading academic journals in the field of entrepreneurship.

The Beedie School of Business acknowledges the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for their funding in support of this conference.

Contact:
Prof. Eric Gedajlovic
eric_gedajlovic@sfu.ca

Tags: entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Eric Gedajlovic, Segal Graduate School, social capital