The magazine is available as both an app for Apple’s iPad, as well as in digital magazine format on the Beedie School of Business website.

The theme of the inaugural summer issue is social media – a growing area of focus for business researchers. Beedie professors have garnered numerous awards for social media research in recent months, and the school is home to a number of faculty and students who are using social media to engage with academics, businesses and the wider community.

Future issues of Ideas@Beedie will delve into themes such as international business, sustainability, entrepreneurship and business technology.

“Our goal is to highlight the breadth and depth of our business ideas to our readers,” said Daniel Shapiro, Dean of SFU’s Beedie School of Business. “With Ideas@Beedie, we hope to convey some of this scholarly activity in ways that are both relevant and insightful.”

Among the research topics explored in the first issue of the magazine are the advent of so-called mutated advertising in the Web 2.0 environment; the engagement of consumers using social media tools; and the growing usage of sustainability-geared apps for smartphone devices. The publication also explores management lessons to be learned from Vancouver’s infamous Stanley Cup rioting in 2011.

The e-magazine also features extensive profiles of Ryan Beedie and Joe Segal, both of whom have played extraordinary roles in the growth of the Beedie School of Business.

The launch of Ideas@Beedie comes on top of an extraordinary 18 month period for the Beedie School of Business. In February of 2011, the school received a record-setting $22 million gift from alumnus Ryan Beedie and his father Keith. Since then, it has launched a number of ambitious initiatives, including the Americas MBA for Executives, with partners in Brazil, Mexico and the United States; an Executive MBA for Aboriginal Business and Leadership, the first program of its kind; Canada’s largest undergraduate student-managed investment fund; and a high-technology entrepreneurship incubator.

This past spring, the school received endorsement from two prestigious accreditation bodies: the European Foundation for Management Development (EQUIS) and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

In addition, the school has vaulted into the world’s upper echelon of research business schools – placing among the top 75 for business research, and the world’s top 25 for management-specific research.

The iPad app can be downloaded at the Apple iTunes store, at http://itunes.apple.com/az/app/ideas-beedie/id532907167?mt=8

The magazine can also be viewed on the web with most browsers at: http://beedie.sfu.ca/ideas

The recent study, entitled “Deciding When to Use Tablets for Business Applications”, published in the most recent issue of MIS Quarterly Executive, is authored by professors Leyland Pitt from SFU and Pierre Berthon of Bentley University, with Beedie School of Business graduate student Karen Robson.

Their research argues that like many disruptive technologies, tablet computers such as the iPad are already changing the face of corporate computing, and will likely have an even greater impact in the future. Pitt and colleagues provide a set of frameworks that can be used to identify when and where a tablet computer device and its applications within can add value to an organization – whether it be in areas as disparate as health care delivery, hospitality, or automobile marketing.

“Computer tablets like the iPad are probably the world’s first truly ‘personal’ computers and are already changing the face of corporate computing,” write the researchers. “By being on a constant lookout for good examples of applications in a wide variety of settings, and asking questions such as “How would that work in our business?” and “Could we do something similar in our organization?”, organizations can identify how applications on table devices can shorten, short-circuit and shape business processes, and thus create business value.”

The researchers maintain that in identifying possible tablet applications, organizations would be wise to learn from the successes of like-minded firms.

“Decision makers seeking to introduce tablets into their own organizations could therefore benefit by identifying successful tablet applications in other organizations, and adapting them for their own use.”

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Recommendations for Using Tablets in Business

The researchers provide five actions that Information Systems organizations can take to ensure that the deployment of tablets provides business benefits:

1. Regularly scan relevant media for effecitve, creative use of tablets in a range of business settings, including some websites they have found particularly useful: Engadget, CultofMac, Mashable, Wired, AppleInsider, TechCruch, and MacWorld.
2. Consider the Inscriptive (input) Informative (output) functions of information systems, and the interaction between them, to envision how tablets might enable these activities to be performed more effectively.
3. Explore opportunities of moving applications that are purely Isolative into the Contextive and Contextual space to provide customers with superior service and improve the productivity of employees.
4. Compare the 3 C-Abilities (Configure-ability, Consume-ability and Context-ability) of tablets versus other mobile devices, recognizing that even small changes in the technological capabilities of these devices may require changes in how organizations think about using these devices.
5. Envision the needs of customers and employees using relevant strategic or business process models. For example, the application that permits boarding passes sent to smartphones for air travelers was developed by understanding that travelers might not have access to a printer to print a boarding pass prior check in.
6. Envision employees accessing the organization’s information systems via mobile devices.