Students at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University can further their social venture ideas with the launch of the new Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator (SEA) program, starting this semester at the SFU Surrey campus.

The program provides students with the resources to generate feasible business models, meet with clients to discuss project details, and gain an understanding of social impact. Students enter as individuals or teams, or join a team in the class.

With $10,000 in support from Vancity, the initiative will help entrepreneurially-minded students move their concepts towards reality and develop projects that will help address tomorrow’s social, environmental, and economic challenges.

“The Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator acts as a bridge between the classroom and the real world; it’s for students who want to know what it takes to build and launch ventures that balance social impact and financial viability,” says Shawn Smith, a Beedie School lecturer in innovation and entrepreneurship, and SEA program leader.

“Students are way ahead on this, questioning traditional business models, and demanding opportunities to learn about how their emerging knowledge and skills can be used to tackle real social problems.”

“SEA is a valuable initiative,” says Andy Broderick, vice president of community investment with Vancity. “Vancity invests in social enterprise and social venture because it supports our vision of redefining wealth, blending financial, social and environmental returns for our members and their communities.

“Supporting students who have an appetite for turning social ideas into social enterprises is in line with how we are trying to use credit to accelerate community impact.”

The program underscores the Beedie School’s commitment to community engagement, and student projects within the program reflect that philosophy.

As an example, undergraduate students Chantelle Buffie and Sonam Swarup will further develop Fusion Kitchen, a project that employs recent immigrant women with culinary skills to teach affordable, authentic, hands-on cooking classes.

The women will utilize the knowledge to build social networks and job skills, providing income and offering a “real” experience for those interested in learning to cook authentic cultural cuisine.

Students Adam Wizinsky, Alee Furman and Alexis Dalzell will use the SEA to take their project, Green Dirt, to the next level.

Green Dirt provides a restaurant composting service that turns organic waste into rich fertilizer for local farms and gardens. It does this for a fee comparable to, or cheaper than regular disposal, thereby reducing garbage flow or recycling into the local ecosystem.

Each team also has a mentor and exposure to experts, investors and entrepreneurs who will provide feedback and guidance.

The program, open to all SFU students with an interest in social ventures, will offer potential summer internship opportunities for students to gain further experience.

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Born Roderick Dale Iverson on September 3, 1959, Rick received his PhD in Industrial Sociology from the University of Iowa in 1992, and eventually joined SFU’s Faculty of Business Administration in 2001 from the University of Melbourne. Rick would go on to become an admired and highly-respected scholar, teacher and colleague within the business faculty and across Simon Fraser University, where he leaves an extraordinary academic legacy. He will also be remembered by colleagues for his sensible advice and counsel, brilliant Australian sense of humour and an unmatched enthusiasm for his work.

Rick was an exemplary scholar in every respect. He was a repeat recipient of the Faculty of Business Administration’s TD Canada Trust Distinguished Teaching Award (2011 and 2004) and the Annual Excellence in Research Award for 2005. He was also awarded the 2008 SFU Award for Excellence in Teaching — an award that can only be received once in a faculty member’s academic career at SFU.

In a prolific scholarly career, Rick published over 50 refereed research articles and book chapters. His human resources research was awarded the prestigious Best Convention Paper at the National Academy of Management meetings on three different occasions.

His research interests in HR management, organizations, and workplace issues such as occupational injury, absenteeism, turnover, and change management led him to consult extensively with organizations in Australia, Canada, and the US.

In addition to teaching and research, he was the Director for the SFU Centre for Workplace Health and Safety; and served as Chair of the Appointments Committee to recruit new faculty members to the Beedie School.

Rick is survived by his daughter Amy as well as his partner Shelly, his sister Leeann, his father Arthur and his ex-wife Dianne.

A memorial service for Rick will be held this Saturday, May 12th at 10:30 am at SFU’s West Mall Complex 3rd floor Atrium. Everyone is invited to celebrate Rick’s life with his family and his extended SFU family and friends.

The competition, part of the 2012 ACE National Exposition held from May 7 to 9 at the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary, Alberta, featured over 50 schools from across Canada competing for the title of national champions.

After successfully negotiating the opening round, the SFU team advanced to the final ten and a semi final knockout round. Despite a strong presentation which drew standing ovations from several of the judges, the team was eliminated by eventual champions Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sam Thiara, Associate Director, Undergraduate Alumni Engagement, was left with no doubt that the students can take great pride in their performance. “One judge told the team that in three years of judging, he had never seen a presentation as solid as (SFU’s) and to keep up the amazing work,” says Thiara. “There were tears from our team because they felt that they gave the performance of a lifetime and they had recognition that they did an exceptional job.”

Having attended the event for the past seven years in support of the SIFE Simon Fraser team, Thiara is well placed to comment on their current and future prospects. “The students earned respect and credibility. The hard work by all showed and they were true champions.”

Project Positive Charge's Recycling Robots

Hands-on experience in project management is now delivered with community impact through social engagement and sustainability at SFU’s Beedie School of Business. And in one case it has meant the advent of recycling robots.

In Beedie Professor Blaize Reich’s project management class, undergraduate students were asked to take on a project of any shape or size to develop the project management skills taught in the class. After being split into groups, the students were given free reign to choose the focus of their project.

One of the groups, Project Positive Charge, opted to use their project to address sustainability issues on campus. Students Alex Tsao, Frank Lo, Henry Lam, Robin Orford and Rebecca Wang set up ten robot-themed recycling boxes around Burnaby campus for old batteries and cell phones and have since seen their project recognised in several competitions.

“We were looking for a way to encourage recycling among students on campus and came up with the idea of a robot theme for the boxes to grab people’s attention,” explains Tsao. “Although SFU had a long-established paper and plastic recycling program, we were conscious that no electronic waste recycling program existed on campus. We set a target of 220lbs of batteries originally, but ultimately surpassed that,  collecting over 250lbs of batteries and 61 cell phones.”

The success of Project Positive Charge has seen the group receive the award for Outstanding Initiative by a Student Group at the inaugural SFU Sustainability Network Awards. In addition, the project’s success also saw the team finish in second place at the 2012 Wideman Prize Competition.

SustainableSFU consulted with the group on the project from the start and were so impressed by the results that they have agreed to maintain the recycling robot depots on campus permanently.

Meanwhile, for student Linda Bui, the project represented an opportunity to combine her studies with fundraising for a cause she was already well acquainted with. Bui used the first meeting with her new team mates, Victoria On, Josh Lam, and Jeevan Binning, to make them aware of Humanitarian Services for Children of Vietnam (HSCV), a charity which Bui had previous experience with.

“Having worked with HSCV for two years now, first as a volunteer and then as a board director, I thought this class project would be an ideal way to raise funds and awareness about their cause,” explains Bui. “My previous work with them has enabled a shelter to be built in Hanoi to house eight underprivileged girls. Our group decided to focus on a project to raise funds which would go towards expanding this shelter to house up to 15 girls.”

The group partnered with Vietnamese 3 Regions, a local non-profit, non political organization that empowers and provides learning and leadership opportunities to youths in the community to organize a charity night to raise funds for HSCV.

The evening featured a silent auction, a raffle, a date auction and live entertainment, with all proceeds going to HSCV. The group used social media to market the event, held at BLVD 22 in downtown Vancouver, sourced local businesses to donate food and prizes for the occasion, and sold almost 200 tickets at $15 each. In total, over $5,000 was raised for the charity.

Bui intends to travel to Hanoi this summer to see how the money is being used. “I have visited Vietnam five times in the past with HSCV and it is always a great experience. This time I intend to teach crafts skills to the girls at the shelter, enabling them to produce quality goods they can then sell to tourists. In this way, we are teaching them skills which allow for a sustainable future beyond the shelter.”

For more information about HSCV, visit www.hscv.org or contact linda.bui@hscv.org.

Focus 2040 is open to undergraduate and graduate business students and is the first competition of its kind in the HRM and organizational strategy sector. Entrants have one task: to predict the world of work in the year 2040.

Beedie undergrad student Tiffanie Lai teamed up with UBC student Amanda Feng to enter the competition, hosted by McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business. Their presentation earned them the third-place prize, which included $2000 in prize money. It was one of four SFU entrants to reach the final 25 in the competition.

Their vision was based on the future of the business world being very much an internationalized one. “Our final presentation focused on an immense shift in global economic power,” explains Lai. “We predict that current emerging economies will overtake the established economic powers, giving rise to an entirely new generation of employees. It will be essential for candidates to be multilingual, cultured and equipped with a roster of international experiences.”

The pair researched current business trends and surveys in order to develop their vision. The judges were impressed by their ideas, which included an international nexus pass allowing people in business to cross borders quickly and easily to facilitate the internationalization of business.

For various reasons, Lai and Feng were not present in the same city during preparation for the competition, and were forced to communicate by phone, email and Skype. “We had a number of hurdles to overcome while developing our vision but we were inspired by the creative edge involved and were determined to persevere.”

Following on from Beedie undergrad Ashlee Liu’s third place finish in last year’s competition, fellow Beedie student John Panzo joined Lai in the final 10 this year, while Kittima Raksarat and Natalia Soloschenko were top 25 finalists.

Held this year at the Hamilton Art Gallery in Hamilton, Ontario, the competition consisted of three phases, with the first two requiring written entries, and the final featuring oral and visual presentations from 10 finalists to a panel of academic and senior industry practitioners. Contestants are allowed 15 minutes for their final presentation before a brief Q&A session from the judges.

Lai is no stranger to case competitions, having participated in JDC West twice, finishing in fourth place both times, and CMA BC where she placed third. “Focus 2040 differs greatly from other case competitions: it’s much more about being creative,” she says. “However, my previous participation in case competitions definitely helped in preparing for Focus 2040 and I am extremely thankful to the Beedie School of Business for enabling me to experience so many different competitions.”

For more information about Focus 2040, visit www.focus2040.ca/

One of the ideas suggested by the groups involved a campus take on the infamous Canucks fans known as the Green Men

A group of Beedie School of Business undergraduate students have been using SustainableSFU as a model to develop their business plan writing skills – and planning a more sustainable campus in the process.

In his class focused on ethics in marketing, Beedie School of Business PhD student and lecturer Todd Green set for his students the task of drafting marketing plans based on a real-life, non-profit organization that operates on SFU’s Burnaby campus.

After the previous cohort’s experience working with International China Concern, a charity which helps abandoned and disabled children in China, Green decided to shift the focus closer to home. While attending SustainableSFU’s annual Sustainability Festival, Green was inspired by the organization’s goal of working towards a sustainable campus and decided that he would ask his next group of students to develop a working marketing plan for SustainableSFU.

“I felt it was important for the students to gain an insight into working with non-profit organizations,” explains Green. “Most students choose projects based on large, for-profit organizations such as Apple or Starbucks for their case studies at university, so I wanted them to see what it was like to work with a very different framework. The tight budget which non-profit organizations work with would force them to be creative.”

With support and guidance available from both Green and staff at SustainableSFU, the students produced professional marketing plans for the organization intended to cover the next year.

A number of marketing initiatives were suggested by the students, with many of them showcasing a creative edge in their recommendations. Many of the proposals involved staging some form of competition to further student engagement with SustainableSFU. One suggestion involved asking students to design a mascot for the organization, while another proposed holding a case competition related to sustainable issues in order to raise awareness on campus.

Another group demonstrated their creative edge by designing a compostable coffee cup sleeve, the idea for which came after the group researched statistics and discovered that over 30,000 coffee cups are discarded on the Burnaby campus each month.

One of the more colourful proposals involved a campus take on the notorious Canucks fans otherwise known as the Green Men. The plan called for actors clad from head to toe in green spandex to roam the campus and reward people for carrying out environmentally friendly acts.

“By working with Sustainable SFU on the project, many of these students will get to see the fruits of their labour. It was interesting to see that the students all had very  different takes on what would make a successful marketing plan for the organization and the quality of ideas suggested was impressive,” says Green.

Duncan Wlodarczak, Executive Director at SustainableSFU briefed the students at the start of the semester on what the organization would look for from the marketing plan, as well as acting as one of the guest judges at the final class presentations.

“The creativity the students showed with many of their ideas was impressive and each group made at least one recommendation which SustainableSFU will likely put into practice in the future,” says Wlodarczak. “Being able to tap into the knowledge of these students was like undertaking marketing research and will be extremely beneficial to the organization as we move forward. There is potential for some of the students to work with us in the future on implementing some of their ideas.”

For Green, who last week defended his PhD dissertation on Corporate Social Responsibility, the benefits of the class are obvious: “From a practical point of view, the students gained some great experience. Many of the students have suggested that they will include this work on their resumes and would consider working for a non-profit organization in future. Beyond that, I think the students really felt that their suggestions can and will make a big difference for the campus.

For more information on SustainableSFU, visit http://sustainablesfu.org/

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.

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.

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

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.

“One of my favourite phrases is, ‘Never practice on the customer,’” Mills explains. “I wanted them to have the experiences of managing real resources and teams to build the skills and knowledge they will need after graduation – but in a supportive and risk-free environment. I didn’t care if they lost the money, the important thing was the experience they would gain from running their own business. It would be a good investment regardless of the outcome.

The services ultimately provided by each group varied greatly. Although two groups offered catering services, one focused on providing quick, healthy snacks by selling fruit cups, while the other concentrated on feeding hungry students studying for mid-terms by offering ramen noodles in convenient locations. Another group set up a music production business allowing customers to record a demo, while a fourth offered private tutoring on a variety of subjects to international students.

The final group chose to offer several products, selling roses on Valentine’s day, offering life coaching and even providing singing telegrams. Although Mills used many of the services offered by the groups himself throughout the term, one memorable highlight for him was sending a singing telegram, Michael Bolton’s “How am I Supposed to Live Without You”, and flowers to a member of Beedie support staff as a thank you for her support.

“Any initial hesitations I had in assigning such a radical project disappeared after the first week of class,” says Mills. “The teams did an amazing job of analyzing the market, finding and fulfilling unmet needs, creating demand for their services and ultimately creating value for their customers. These students didn’t just rise to the occasion; they blew my expectations out of the water. The passion for innovation and value creation, and the way they embraced the entrepreneurial spirit was amazing.”

Mills offered support and advice through simulated board meetings with the groups throughout the project, and the students were able to put the knowledge gained from their Beedie education into practice. “We were forced to utilize a lot of skills we had learned from other classes at SFU while running our business. My statistics class came in particularly handy when figuring out how much fruit would be needed to fill each cup,” explains Ed Wong, of the Fruit Dealers group.

After the final class presentations, Mills was delighted with the learning outcomes the students demonstrated. As an added bonus, he ultimately saw a return on his investment, with each group posting a profit. Mills, however, chose to return his 15 percent portion of the profits to the groups.

Most students chose to donate the profits they eventually earned to the Zajac Ranch for Children, a local non-profit providing summer camps to youth with chronic illnesses, that had been the subject of a live in-class case study during the class. “It almost brought me to tears, I was so moved,” says Mills. “Adding value to both business and community is the true Beedie spirit.”

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

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.

Working on the culinary premise that “food is the best way to learn, cook and connect,” they are in the process of setting up their next class featuring Pakistani cuisine on Friday, May 4.

The two are working with Shahnaz Asfar, a woman who emigrated from Pakistan to Canada two years ago and despite more than 25 years of teaching experience in her native country, has yet to find employment.

“Since arrive, Shahnaz has done her best to adjust to the new environment and develop a social circle,” says Buffie, a Surrey resident. “At the same time, she has attempted to develop her skills in the Canadian education system.

“While she is gaining credentials through such courses as the Canadian Early Childhood Education assistant program, she still faces obstacles in pursuit of securing full-time employment in Canada.”

The evening is open to groups of people interested in learning more about Pakistani food and culture, including meet-up groups, corporate teams and clubs, as well as individuals. Space, however, is limited.

The class will be held at the Woodland Smokehouse & Commissary on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, 6 – 9 p.m.

For more information see www.thefusionkitchen.com/

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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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

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

A hot tub water care system, an employee wellness solution for companies and a sustainable recycling initiative aimed at helping Vancouver achieve its goal of zero waste for 2020 were the big winners at a Beedie School of Business social entrepreneurship competition.

Opportunity Fest 2012 gave SFU business undergrads the opportunity to showcase their class-produced ventures to judges from industry, academia and the wider business community. Held at SFU’s Surrey campus on April 11, the event featured three venture categories: commercial, social and sustainable, with the winners of each category awarded $1000.

In the commercial category the winning venture was “Team CMS”, who impressed judges with their Easy Care Water Solutions unit. Their electronic hand-held device simultaneously measures for all required levels to maintain water chemistry balance in hot tubs at a far cheaper price than similar units.

The social category was won by Team “Smart Fit”, who designed a wristband which measures heart rate and sleeping patterns and utilizes Bluetooth to update an online support and tracking platform. The technology allows employers to view benefits more reliably than traditional office wellness programs.

The sustainable category saw Team “Second Chance” take the top prize for their supplies material donation system. Through their system, the team collected over 30 broken or forgotten umbrellas and 50 rice bags from SFU students, restaurants and other businesses in the lower mainland. They then used these materials to create environmentally-friendly, handmade backpacks.

In addition, the male or female student from each category who presented the best pitch to the judges was awarded the title of Mr or Ms Opportunity, and received a networking lunch with the judges at Gotham’s restaurant in Vancouver. Mr Opportunity this year went to Jason Uswak, Jordan Kipnes and Carlos Hernandez, while Carrie Lee, Stacey Wallin and Joana Guray can now boast the title of Ms Opportunity.

Building on the success of last year’s inaugural event, more than 100 students from seven different Beedie School of Business classes participated in the marketplace-style exhibition, which was open to the public. The event included themes of sustainability and social innovation, along with traditional entrepreneurship and business strategy.

“Opportunity Fest is like a Capstone experience for these undergraduate students,” says Eric Gedajlovic, Professor at the Beedie School of Business. “In today’s inter-connected world, where things are happening so rapidly and your plans are outdated as soon as they are established, success and growth depends on your ability to continuously identify and pursue opportunities.”

Other student ventures presented at the event included: a fabric-based gift wrap; a system which harvests rain water for residential and commercial buildings; a mobile home energy management system; eco-friendly flat shoes distributed through vending machines at nightclubs; and an app that allows users to send digital gift cards from their mobile phone.

Students presented their ventures through trade-show style exhibits that included prototypes, videos, graphical displays and more. The judges then expressed their financial interest through investment of emulated venture capital dollars.

“This event is a little bit of Dragon’s Den, and a bit of Apprentice,” says Gedajlovic. “The teams take this opportunity to develop a full-blown project. These are ideas and new ventures that come from dissatisfaction with the way things are done currently and have potential to represent viable business concepts. Opportunity Fest gives them the opportunity to develop something they will really care about.”

The full results are as follows:

First place, Commercial: CMS

Team members: Jason Uswak, Andrew Bowler, Wendy Dai, Chelsea Chan and Harry Meeuwsen

“A great amount of fear and confusion surrounds hot tub water care. If people make a mistake and the water becomes unbalanced a variety of problems can occur. The EasyCare Water Solutions Unit successfully eliminates this problem. CMS’ EasyCare is an electronic handheld device that simultaneously measures all required levels (pH, alkalinity, etc.) for water chemistry balance. It significantly reduces user error, minimizes user time and enhances the value of hot tub ownership. There are no other high quality devices that provide this exact value proposition at an acceptable price point.”

First place, Social: Smart Fit

Team members: Ryan Boyd, Stacey Wallin and Tara Akins

“SmartFit sells a wellness solution to companies for their office employees. The solution includes a wristband that measures heart rate and sleeping patterns to help the user make better individualized decisions about their exercise and lifestyle. The wristband uses Bluetooth to update an online support and tracking platform. Employers are able to see benefits more reliably than with traditional wellness programs.”

First place, Sustainable: Second Chance

Team members: Cindy Cheng, Melissa Maat, Celeste Jhala, Jimmy Pun and Vanessa Tai

“Second Chance is made up of five like minded students with a passion for helping make Vancouver a greener city. It was created with Vancouver’s Greenest City 2020 Zero Waste goal in mind. Founded in February of 2012, Second Chance has kept bags of solid waste from being tossed into its city’s landfill. Through its supplies material donation system, Second Chance has collected over 30 broken or forgotten umbrellas and 50 rice bags from fellow students, restaurants, and other businesses from all over the lower mainland. These materials have been transformed into beautiful, one-of-a-kind, environmentally friendly handmade backpacks.”

Mr. Opportunity: Jason Uswak (Commercial), Jordan Kipnes (Social), Carlos Hernandez (Sustainable)

Ms. Opportunity: Carrie Lee (Commercial), Stacey Wallin (Social), Joana Guray (Sustainable)

For the full list of competing teams at Opportunity Fest 2012, visit http://beedie.sfu.ca/oppfest/competitors/

The following article was published by BC Business Magazine on April 2, 2012 as part of their MBA guide.

BY KRISTEN HILDERMAN, BC BUSINESS MAGAZINE

Craig Ryomoto, Director, Online Customer Acquisition | HootSuite Media, Inc.

@craigryomoto
hootsuite.com

Where did you get your MBA?
SFU Beedie School of Business

What year did you graduate?
2010

Why did you want to get your MBA?
I chose to pursue an MBA because I was looking for a career transition to another industry, and to gain the skills to move into a senior management position.

What do you think clinched your position when applying to your MBA program?
I believe it was both my post-secondary education and my work experience. My background in the science of mathematics paired well with my desire to pursue a career in business. It gave me broader perspective and worked in my favour since much of the MBA program is numbers-driven. Prior to applying for my MBA I also ensured that I had at least 3 years experience in a key decision-making role so I could sufficiently leverage the classroom lessons.

What did you learn from doing your MBA that has most helped you in your career?
Soft skills such as time management, work ethic, problem solving, acting as a team player and building self-confidence have proved invaluable to advancing my career post-MBA. Hard skills can be learnt through courseware, but the MBA’s rigorous program forced me to improve on all the soft skills that are essential to succeed in the workforce.

What was your first job after you graduated?
I secured an internship at an Internet company, Reinvent, where I was responsible for business analytics and online marketing for multi-million dollar web properties. It eventually led to a full-time position.

Tell me a bit about your job now.
I currently oversee acquisition marketing, website optimization, marketing analytics, search & affiliate marketing and marketing automation for HootSuite, a global leader in the social business industry. We have over 3.5 million customers and that number is steadily growing through my team’s efforts.

Is your current career what you had envisioned when you started your MBA?
I had goals to continuously progress in my career but I didn’t expect my career growth to happen so quickly, and with such a dynamic and high-growth company. In short, the MBA was a lot of work but has been a tremendous investment.

See the full article at www.bcbusinessonline.ca/careers-and-employment/what-does-bc-mba-look

The following article was submitted by Beedie School of Business graduate Esther Chang:

As you learn in any introduction to economics course, life has a lot of tradeoffs. So if your goals are to travel around the world to get a deeper appreciation of life and culture, you will most likely have to trade off a lot time from developing your career.

By participating in an international internship with AIESEC, however, you can make the most of both options. You get the opportunity to experience a foreign (and sometimes very exotic) country in conjunction with professional development.

I graduated from the Beedie School of Business in September 2011 and concentrated in HR and Marketing. As soon as I finished, I travelled to Bogota, Colombia between September 2011 and February 2012 – this proved to be one of the best experiences of my life.

While in Bogota, I worked in an organization that provides English language solutions for corporations, most of which are in the oil and gas industry. My role in this company was two-fold. As a fluent English speaker, I often taught advanced English to managers and employees working at the Colombian head offices, and assisted in editing and proofreading presentations and reports (BUS360 goes a long way!). The end readers of most of these reports were investors or board of directors from Canada or the United States, so the business communication and presentation skills that I gained after years of class presentations and report-writing at the Beedie School of Business were invaluable.

My second role in the company really developed my professional skills. Working as an HR Assistant, I gained experience in recruitment and training and development. The interpersonal skills and teamwork skills I learned through the numerous group projects at Beedie taught me how to work with new and potential employees and how to generate excitement towards working for the organization.

I was also involved in making proposals and presentations to potential clients, and I met with potential language resource suppliers/publishers. In all of these functions I utilized the skills developed at the Beedie School of Business.

The professional experience I gained by working in Colombia was a definite résumé booster, but being placed in a completely different land and culture really allowed me to grow as a person.

I did most of my travelling during weekends and holidays, which was where I feel I gained the most experience in another culture. Engaging and living with people who have completely different ideas about what is important and necessary in life was a real eye-opener. It changed the way I think and it sparked new passions and dreams that I would never have thought possible. Perhaps best of all, I met people I never knew existed, and who I would otherwise never have made a connection with.

I first heard about this opportunity when I received an email saying: “Come to COLOMBIA for a life changing experience.” I can now testify that I did have a life-changing experience, and I would recommend this to any other student.

AIESEC’s job is to take care of you. They help you with housing, transportation, culture shock, and perhaps most importantly, with visas. I would urge anyone to do something different with their life and to internationalize their BBA degree with AIESEC. Go explore and stir your sense of adventure. Go see and change the world through AIESEC SFU and the Beedie School of Business.

About AIESEC

AIESEC is the world’s largest student run organization that develops student leaders through a Global Internship and Global Community Development Program. By focusing on youth leadership development, AIESEC offers the opportunity for students to participate in meaningful experiences abroad in a global learning environment. For more information on AIESEC, visit www.aiesec.ca/sfu

The following article was published by BC Business Magazine on April 2, 2012 as part of their MBA guide.

BY KRISTEN HILDERMAN, BC BUSINESS MAGAZINE

Mike Underell, Account Manager | 6S Marketing

@mikeunderell
6smarketing.com

Where did you get your MBA?
SFU Beedie School of Business

What year did you graduate?
2009

Why did you want to get your MBA?
To better prepare myself for more demanding job roles and/or higher responsibility.

What do you think clinched your position when applying to your MBA program?
I would bet on my essay, which focused on being a good, all around person, more than just grades and experience.

What did you learn from doing your MBA that has most helped you in your career?
It taught me to approach problems in a different, more structured way as well as build confidence in myself regarding my abilities.

What was your first job after you graduated?
Social media coordinator for Electronic Arts on their franchise “Need for Speed” (one of their largest).

Tell me a bit about your job now.
I’m an account manager for the digital marketing agency 6S Marketing. I handle a portfolio of 12-15 clients and I help them with all kinds of different Internet marketing services (SEO, CPC, social media, email, analytics). It’s perfect because at EA I was having a hard time expanding beyond social media and here I get to use more of my skills. Oh, and it’s a really fun environment.

Is your current career what you had envisioned when you started your MBA?
Yes, this is exactly what I saw myself doing after my MBA. I couldn’t be happier and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

See the full article at www.bcbusinessonline.ca/careers-and-employment/what-does-bc-mba-look

“Uh huh, you know what it is. Simon Fraser, Simon Fraser, Simon Fraser, Simon Fraser.”

It’s the mantra that has morphed into Simon Fraser University’s unofficial and irreverent refrain over the past two months. And right along with it, Beedie School of Business undergraduate student Matthew Tse, one of the creators of the immensely popular “Sh*t SFU Says” video, has been along for the viral video ride. His YouTube video garnered 50,000 views in just four days—and is now not far from reaching 100,000 views. In the wake of the downloads, Tse is enjoying a bit of on-campus fame himself.

Tse certainly did not expect the video to become as popular as it did, though.

“Honestly, I originally brought up the idea to Julian [the director of the video] as a bit of a joke and random thought,” Matthew recounts. “Seeing as how so many people were doing parodies [of the “Sh*t Girls Say” video], we felt SFU needed one.” The video has since gone on to enjoy mass appeal with students in British Columbia and abroad, and has even enjoyed some critical acclaim from film industry insiders.

Matthew Tse (left) and Wesley Wang ponder the logic behind the Academic Quadrangle's name

Making videos is not the only thing Tse does during his free time. The third-year finance and MIS student keeps busy with a plethora of extra-curricular activities; he is currently the Community Director in SFU’s Canadianized Asian Club (CAC), and recently completed a term as Director of Sponsorship for the 2012 CaseIT organizing committee. He was even auctioned off for charity at CAC’s annual Dating Auction in 2011. Outside of SFU, Tse is part of AX3 Multimedia, a successful new venture organized by university students that provides the latest Asian lifestyle and pop culture news for a Vancouver audience.

With all these commitments, it’s no small feat that Tse can find the time for his schoolwork and his extra-curriculars.

“It’s a combination of just managing my time as best as I can and a lot of late nights. It also doesn’t hurt that I love everything that I’m doing and am involved with. It never feels like work! I’ll be focusing more on school [in the upcoming year, though].”

While schoolwork and university activities will be his main focus, Tse does not plan on leaving the social media environment of YouTube anytime soon.

“I love the arts and am extremely passionate about it. There will definitely be a lot more skits, parodies, as well as shorts,” he says.

To stay updated with Tse’s latest videos, subscribe to his YouTube channel or follow him on Twitter.

Watch the “Sh*t SFU Says” video below:

The following article was published by BC Business Magazine on April 2, 2012 as part of their MBA guide.

BY  LANA MADOR, BC BUSINESS MAGAZINE

The compelling tweets of SFU MBA professor Ian McCarthy earned him a spot on OnlineMBA’s international list: “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

Business professor Ian McCarthy started out as a techie, working for several years as a manufacturing engineer before earning a PhD in operations strategy from the University of Sheffield in England. So it’s no wonder that he’s as comfortable with the latest communications technology as with flow charts and pie graphs.

Tell me about your Twitter handle: @toffeemen68.
I thought I was going to use Twitter for personal reasons and Toffeemen is the nickname of the English soccer team I support, Everton. I kept it because a lot of people think it’s interesting and wonder what it means.

How is social media part of your teaching and research strategy?
I started just to try it out, but I realized it has to be strategy-driven. Organizations are monitoring what’s going on in the world, what competitors are doing and social media is a really important way of doing that because it happens much faster than other publications. You can use it to broadcast or to listen, so I’m listening and broadcasting to a community of people who would be interested in my research. My self-serving, strategic reason for doing it is I want the world to know a bit more about my research and teaching and benefit from it.

How did you get involved with SFU’s MBA program?
SFU has an MBA in technology management and it’s great because in one MBA we have people from biotech firms, software companies and computer gaming companies. They all started with engineering and science degrees and now they’re either thinking about setting up their own venture or they want to develop their current business in a different way. They want the management skills across the board, but it’s focused purely on technology companies and the people who are growing them or starting them. So that focus on innovation is what brought me to SFU.

How much of social media’s advancement do you think is driven by the consumer?
The evolution of the smart phone and all the apps is interplay between the consumer and technologists and it’s done in an open way. Google is more open than Apple, but Apple is still open and controlling. If we don’t have the platform architecture to let consumers and companies keep changing what phones do, then it’s limited to expert hackers who just do it for themselves. But Apple and Google are monitoring these people and sometimes employing them or copying them. Tech has this ability where you can configure it. You can’t do much with a lump of coal, but Xboxes and cellphones are really highly configurable.

What role does social media play in the MBA courses you teach?
It really does shape my teaching and my research. I incorporate it when I teach innovation. The majority of innovations are created by consumers who are frustrated with products and decide to improve them themselves. This is “open innovation” and in terms of tracking and monitoring it, social media is very important. Also, in terms of coaching students about jobs and managing their reputations, five years ago it didn’t exist, but now their online presence is a major factor.

See the full article at www.bcbusinessonline.ca/education/school-social-media

The following article was published by BC Business Magazine on April 2, 2012 as part of their MBA guide.

BY KRISTEN HILDERMAN, BC BUSINESS MAGAZINE

Jessica Oman, Owner | Write Ahead Consulting

@writeahead
writeahead.ca

Where did you get your MBA?
SFU Beedie School of Business

What year did you graduate?
2009

Why did you want to get your MBA?
I felt I needed a graduate degree to move my career forward. I had been working at Okanagan College and became interested in business when I started looking at ways to run academic departments more efficiently. I took a few undergrad courses at OC before deciding to pursue an MBA.

What do you think clinched your position when applying to your MBA program?
As a professional writer, I would like to think it was my essay! I also had substantial and progressive work experience in public education, and my previous grades and GMAT score were fairly high too.

What did you learn from doing your MBA that has most helped you in your career?
The MBA gave me the confidence I needed to pursue starting my own business. After the program I felt like I knew what I had to do to run an organization on my own.  

What was your first job after you graduated?
I worked as an associate dean at a local private business college.

Tell me a bit about your job now.
I’m the owner of Write Ahead Consulting. We are a small team of experts who write business plans for start-up companies and also provide copy writing and editing services, often to those same customers who come back to us for help with their writing once they’ve launched their businesses. I’ve had the business since July 2010. I do about 60 per cent of the work and my team does the rest. I spend the remainder of my time on marketing, PR and other business development activities.

Is your current career what you had envisioned when you started your MBA?
When I started the program, I thought I would take a management position in a small to medium organization focused on sustainability. At first, I didn’t envision myself running my own business, but that all changed a few months after graduation when I sat down and began to articulate how I could help foster local economies and help small businesses grow. I looked at what was needed, and saw that the writing process really bogged a lot of people down. I thought if I could remove that barrier, entrepreneurs could move forward faster and focus on running their businesses more than writing about them.

See the full article at www.bcbusinessonline.ca/careers-and-employment/what-does-bc-mba-look

The following article was published by BC Business Magazine on April 2, 2012 as part of their MBA guide.

BY REBECCA TAY, BC BUSINESS MAGAZINE

Local schools broaden their international focus to include Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Say “BRIC” to any economist, analyst or politician and the response will almost invariably be that the countries represented by the acronym – Brazil, Russia, India and China – will dominate the global economic landscape in coming years. Mention BRIC to local university deans and faculty heads, however, and the response is more varied. Given our location on the Pacific coast and the demographic makeup of B.C., local business schools have had long-standing relationships with institutions in China. Now, however, the other BRIC countries, particularly Brazil and India, have begun to enter the conversation.

Last November, as part of Premier Christy Clark’s trade mission to India, the Sauder School of Business and UBC opened offices in Bangalore and New Delhi and signed memoranda of understanding with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. “Our new offices put UBC and Sauder on the ground in a country that will influence global economic growth for the next century,” says Sauder dean Daniel Muzyka. “India has some very strong indigenous post-secondary business schools,” he continues, “and their positioning has only been enhanced with the rapid development of the economy there.”

According to Muzyka, enrolment at post-secondary institutions in India will see unprecedented numbers in coming years and a presence on the ground in India will help UBC and Sauder build relationships with those schools. “We see it as a value exchange,” he explains. “The offices will help us manage the institutional relationships we’re developing in India, give us a portal to the student market in India, provide an opportunity for our faculty to learn and do research in new and developing environments and, as the market develops, provide opportunities for our students that want jobs in India.” Underlying his enthusiasm is the fact that applications to Sauder’s full-time MBA program from Indian-educated candidates now account for one-third of all applications, compared to just over one-tenth in 2007. A growing number are also now returning to live and work in India after graduation.

Ali Dastmalchian, dean of the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business and the Gill Graduate School, both at UVic, sees this new-found focus on India slightly differently. “We do have quite a bit of interest in the BRIC countries,” he acknowledges, “but our core interest is still in Southeast Asia.” Besides seeing Canada’s economy as a bridge between Asia – including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao – and other parts of the world, Dastmalchian believes our economic future lies there due to its geographic proximity and the direct links in identity that have been established over the past 20 years. He agrees with Muzyka’s approach to developing a presence in India, citing long-term, focused commitments as the key to success for both students and the school in any exchange relationship.

Such long-term commitments already exist between UBC and China. Sauder offers a 20-month program taught at the Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Muzyka believes that the new partnerships in India will be similarly successful. “We’re weaving the institutions together at multiple levels,” he says, “which ultimately lets you address needs in the marketplace quickly.”

Dastmalchian recognizes the need to prepare students for increasing globalization, wherever that may be. All MBA students at UVic are required to complete an International Integrative Management Exercise (IIME), which includes an exchange component to China, Brazil or India. “We want to train our grads, wherever they come from, to open their eyes to the world,” reasons Dastmalchian. The IIME is an intensive case study into a real issue put forth by a local company here in B.C. Months of research into the issue culminate in a 10- to 12-day data-collection trip to the target country; the students then return to present their findings and recommendations to the company. “Over the last 20 years, close to 90 of these projects have been completed,” Dastmalchian says proudly, “which is an incredible service to the Canadian economy.”

Amritpal Randhawa, who graduated from UVic’s MBA program in 2010, worked with a helicopter transport company looking to expand its operations in Brazil for his IIME. The experience led in part to his receiving the 2010 BC Export Award for International Business Studies. Inspired by his experience and a speech by Canada’s trade commissioner to Brazil acknowledging the importance of Canadian companies operating in global markets, he decided to pursue an international business specialization in the final year of his MBA.

Such specialisations and opportunities are increasingly important. For some, such as David Thomas, a professor at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, “the shift in geographic focus is a flavour-of-the-month thing. What’s more important is to focus on the international aspects of business. The opportunities to interact with people who are culturally different are now greater than they have ever been.”

Of the nine MBA programs offered in B.C., nearly all now offer an exchange program or partnership with at least one of the BRIC countries. “The general trend is that people want more global experience,” says Muzyka. “Some students want to be trained to simply operate better in a global business world; others have a desire to seek an accelerated career elsewhere; still others want to gain perspective in one part of the world and then look for opportunities in North America or Europe afterwards that will be enriched by their experiences.” In addition to UVic’s IIME projects in Brazil, China and India and UBC’s shiny new offices in India, SFU has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the India Institute of Management Indore to explore new research programs, exchanges and consulting and project opportunities.

Last September, the Segal Graduate School at SFU’s Beedie School of Business also launched the Americas MBA for Executives. SFU’s new partnership with the Fundação Instituto de Administração in São Paulo, the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México in Mexico City and Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, Tennessee, means that from August 2012 to April 2013, 60 students will spend nine days in each of the three cities, learning about corporate social responsibility, emerging-markets strategies, international competition and how to foster innovation and launch new ventures within an organization. “We developed the program to meet the growing interest in north-south business and investment in the Americas,” says Colleen Collins, associate dean of Segal Graduate School. “Brazil is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and the U.S. and Mexico are important trading partners for Canada,” she continues.

Elsewhere in the province, Royal Roads has translated its MBA course material into Mandarin and is delivering it to students in more than 20 cities across China with the help of affiliate schools. It has already granted MBA degrees to more than 700 students in China. Similar arrangements exist for non-business faculties at UNBC, Thompson Rivers, Trinity Western and Vancouver Island U, which can only mean one thing: no matter which BRIC country you deem most important, MBA programs across the board will be looking both south and east in coming years.

See the full article at www.bcbusinessonline.ca/education/bc-mbas-go-global-bric-partnerships

The business school, with campuses in Burnaby, Surrey and downtown Vancouver, is home to Canada’s first Executive MBA program and one of Canada’s largest undergraduate programs. It was first accredited by AACSB in 2006. Since that time, it has continued to grow its reputation as one of the country’s leading teaching and learning settings, and for producing global-class research for the knowledge economy.

The renewed distinction puts Beedie in an elite class of business and management schools globally. AACSB accreditation is considered a hallmark of excellence in business education and has been earned by less than five percent of the world’s business schools.

Founded in 1916, AACSB International is the longest serving global accrediting body for business schools that offer undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees in business and accounting. Meeting the AACSB accreditation standards requires a high-quality teaching environment, a commitment to continuous improvement, and curricula responsive to the needs of businesses. In addition, as required by the AACSB standards, all accredited schools must go through a peer review process every five years in order to maintain their accreditation.

View announcement from AACSB International.

MSc in Finance students from the Beedie School of Business have won a major award at the prestigious RISE investment competition hosted at Dayton University, Ohio.

The students won first place in the Balanced Investment Style category for their work on the Student Investment Advisory Service (SIAS) fund, the student-run investment fund which sees Beedie students managing over $10 million of the university’s endowment portfolio.

Bill Dennis, Jared Wolk, Mehdi Saedi and Jon Lo attended RISE as representatives of the SIAS fund to present the entire team’s work on the fund throughout 2011. The SIAS fund was judged to have the best risk adjusted return for the 2011 calendar year in its category, a reflection of the excellent work that both the current and previous cohort have put into the fund.

The SIAS fund is Canada’s largest student-run investment fund, and one of the largest such funds in North America. With a current market value of $10.8 million, the fund is managed by students from the Master of Science in Finance program, providing them with invaluable real world investment, risk management and compliance experience.

Now in its twelfth year, RISE is the world’s largest student investment forum, each year bringing finance industry leaders together to discuss economic and market trends, forecasts and critical issues. This year’s forum ran from March 29 – 31, and was held in conjunction with the RISE competition, which recognizes student-managed investment funds in six different categories.

For more information on RISE, visit www.udayton.edu/business/rise/

For more information on the SIAS fund, visit http://beedie.sfu.ca/sias/

A course that was launched less than a year ago at SFU’s Beedie School of Business has provided students with unprecedented focus on analyzing and optimizing the value of social media for organizations and businesses. Through community-building projects, undergrad students applied the social media lessons of the course to new and established not-for-profits and social agencies on a wide range of issues, from life-saving transplants to disability in sport.

The course, Social Media & Business, was taught at SFU’s Surrey campus by assistant professor Jan Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung.

Students used Facebook and the Twitter hashtag #BUS450 to engage with each other and their teachers, and to collaborate on assigned projects and readings. Throughout the semester, Kietzmann and Gurung invited industry thoughts leaders, entrepreneurs and businesses to share their insights and expertise in social media. In the classroom, students were joined by She & He consulting, Translink and Yelp. Via Skype, they also connected with University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist, and representatives from Badgeville and Crowdbooster. Outside the classroom, students visited Vancouver’s Invoke and Hootsuite to learn from two very successful global players in the Social Media space.

As a final project, students were tasked with developing a social media campaign for a community client or campus issue.

Among the highlights:

- The student project entitled “Don’t Be a Douchebag” used Twitter and Facebook to accrue over 100 registrations for the BC Transplant Society, with the aim of providing potentially life-saving transplants for British Columbians. The campaign’s social media messaging was endorsed and retweeted by the likes of musicians Jann Arden and Bif Naked, television personality Chris Gailus, and NHL hockey legends Doug Gilmour and Brendan Morrisson.

- Students with the #SIFEHungerArmy campaign raised over $500 for the Surrey Food Bank, and garnered over 1,000 blog page views to raise awareness of the food bank’s impact and needs in the community.

- A social media campaign addressing disability in winter sport, “Adaptive Sliding Canada”, was embraced by winter sports athletes and fans across Canada and is helping to build momentum for the inclusion of new sports in future Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

- A group of students going by the moniker “Jersey Score” – through fundraising tweet-ups and other social media activities – raised over $1500 for sporting gear and apparel for soccer-playing youth in Manamani, South Africa.

- The students from the project “Chic Campus” engaged via social media with fashion events and fundraisers across the Simon Fraser University campus to highlight the role of fashion in the university context.

- A group of students from the project called “SimonFSays” parlayed user-generated social media content into the capturing of student and community sentiment at Simon Fraser University in the digital sphere.

Social Media & Business, launched last fall, was offered for the second time this past spring, and has quickly emerged as a favourite offering among Simon Fraser University students, especially those who are increasingly compelled by the intersection of social media tactics with overarching business strategy and societal change.

“Our students worked very hard and, among the many difficult deliverables they had, they impressed me the most with their social media campaigns,” said Kietzmann. “They truly engaged communities – local, national and international, and to that end I am very proud of what they accomplished.”

The Beedie School continues to enjoy recognition for taking a leadership role in the promotion of social media for entrepreneurs, managers and organizations.

Last December, Kietzmann won a noteworthy research award from the journal Business Horizons (along with co-authors Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre.) His paper “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media,” won the business journal’s Best Article Award for 2011, in great part for its industry impact and recognition.

And the innovation-focused tweets of SFU MBA professor Ian McCarthy have earned him a spot on OnlineMBA’s international list of “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

A group of undergrad students from the Beedie School of Business have taken it upon themselves to feed their fellow students – with a focus on healthy eating.

The Fruit Dealers are providing hungry staff and students with healthy and nutritious fruit cups delivered throughout SFU. Each fruit cup is priced at $4, contains three portions of fruit, and is made with the team’s special secret sauce for added flavour.

The team consists of BBA students Ed Wong, Kiran Dhinsa, Steven Ruggles, Jeff Phung, and Jacky Zhang and was formed as part of their Business 478 (Strategy) class with Adam Mills. At the beginning of the class, Adam suggested that each group start a real business on campus. Since then, with support and guidance from Adam, the Fruit Dealers have been working to turn their idea into a sustainable business.

When trying to decide on the nature of their class business, the team wanted to solve a problem faced by lots of students on campus. “During our initial meeting Steven got hungry and pulled out slices of fruit and vegetables,” explains Kiran. “The rest of the team said something to the effect of: ‘That looks really good, I wish I had time to prepare that kind of healthy food every day.’ That was our eureka moment!”

Social media has played a big part in the team’s business strategy. They have not only used it to generate awareness of their brand, but also use it as the main route for customers to place orders. “We wanted customers to be able to order a fruit cup within 3 clicks, so we integrated our ordering form into our Facebook page. Now customers are able to learn about our brand and instantly order a fruit cup.”

Initially launched on the Burnaby campus, the Fruit Dealers have since expanded to cater for both Surrey and Vancouver campuses. Demand for their product has been so high that they have also expanded their range to include different fruit mixes to cater for different nutritional needs. The team even launched a special exam time “Genius in a Cup” mix, full of anti-oxidants to stimulate the brains of students.

Not wanting to turn a profit by any means necessary, sustainability has been a priority for the team since the launch: “We purchase fruit that can be grown locally, from local farm markets. All our product packaging is recyclable and we will continue to compound our sustainability initiatives as we move forward,” Steven explains. “We also plan on collaborating with local SFU organizations that promote sustainability initiatives to grow into an even more environmentally conscious organization.”

The Fruit Dealers is just one of a wide variety of businesses to emerge from the Business 478 class this term. Other businesses that have arisen from the class include: a conversational English tutoring class; a mobile music demo recording studio; and even romance assistance coaching! With the final class presentation this week, each group will be presenting their outcomes and demonstrating why their business succeeded or failed.

So with the final presentation upon us and class about to end, do the Fruit Dealers plan to carry on with their business? “Absolutely! We have had an overwhelmingly positive response already and we will continue to grow beyond SFU and cater to a larger market in Downtown Vancouver!”

For more information on the Fruit Dealers, visit www.facebook.com/fruitdealers or follow them on Twitter.

An upcoming event at Simon Fraser University Surrey and hosted by the Beedie School of Business will enable entrepreneurially-minded students to present their venture ideas to industry experts.

The second annual Opportunity Fest will be held on Wednesday April 11 from 6pm to 9pm in the Mezzanine of SFU’s Surrey Campus. Building on the success of last year’s event, over 100 students from seven different Beedie School of Business classes will participate in the marketplace-style exhibition, with three venture categories of commercial, sustainable and social ventures.

Students will present their class-produced ventures through trade-show exhibits that include product prototypes, videos, graphical display boards and more. Judges from industry, academia and the wider business community will evaluate the student ventures and express their financial interest or commitment through investment of emulated venture capital dollars.

Last year’s competition was won by Aspire, a venture which aims to provide meaningful employment opportunities for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  Developed by Beedie undergraduate students Alice Chen, Matt Armstrong, Joanne Chen, Robbie Hsieh and Justin Findley, Aspire leverages the characteristics of autism as a competitive advantage in the software testing industry, creating a sustainable and nurturing work environment for ASD sufferers.

Second place at last year’s competition went to Ratemylot.com, a website which assists motorists in finding safe, convenient and clean parking lots through analysis of various relevant statistics. The third placed venture was Bloggle, a product which combines traditional ski goggles and a bluetooth headset to allow wearers to make phone calls and listen to music while skiing or snowboarding.

“Opportunity Fest is like a Capstone experience for these undergraduate students,” says Eric Gedajlovic, Professor at the Beedie School of Business. “In today’s inter-connected world, where things are happening so rapidly and your plans are outdated as soon as they are established, success and growth depends on your ability to continuously identify and pursue opportunities.”

This year, $1000 will be awarded to the top teams in each venture category, while the male and female student presenting the best pitch to the judges will also be awarded with the title of Mr or Ms Opportunity and will receive a networking lunch with the industry judges.

“This event is a little bit of Dragon’s Den, and a bit of Apprentice,” says Gedajlovic. “The teams take this opportunity to develop a full-blown project. These are ideas and new ventures that come from dissatisfaction with the way things are done currently and have potential to represent viable business concepts. The opportunities that people discover are typically derived from their own background or experiences or network. Opportunity Fest gives them the opportunity to develop something they will really care about.”

For more information:
Eric Gedajlovic, SFU Beedie School of Business
erg@sfu.ca; 778-782-5168
Twitter.com/gedajlovic

Long-term, that can be a big problem for health agencies trying to impart valuable information and advice to their audiences and the general public – whether that information is about smoking cessation, cancer prevention or medical conditions like hepatitus.

Crutzen, a researcher from the Department of Health Promotion at the CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care in the Netherlands, is a visiting scholar at the Beedie School of Business this year. He is working with award-winning Beedie School of Business faculty member Dianne Cyr on e-loyalty and website content issues in the context of health care and health promotion and marketing.

“I see it (health promotion) as a field to apply knowledge,” said Crutzen, who has a background in psychology. “This is a field where there is a real need for this kind of knoweldge”. His study with Professor Cyr, using eye-tracking technology, will examine how websites can attract and hold a visitor’s attention.

And they will focus in on how website perception influences action. As Crutzen explains by way of a question, “If people like it more, will they use it more?”

Another key aspect he and Cyr will explore is what Crutzen describes as “social presence — which can be seen as the extent to which a medium is perceived to convey a feeling of human contact, sociability, and sensitivity.” Content such as photos, testimonials and patient stories will all be measured for their impact on this presence.

It’s important that health promotion websites keep people involved and interested, he says. “Those who use the site more will remember more of the information.”

Crutzen completed his PhD at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Since arriving in Vancouver, Crutzen has admired the diversity of the Pacific Rim city’s population. “Everyone is from somewhere else, which is different from the Netherlands. There is a lot of mobility.”