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Beedie School of Business News

User innovation is a potential creative goldmine for organizations – but there are many potential hurdles that must be overcome in order for a firm to strategically take advantage of these opportunities.

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Beedie School of Business News

In 2010’s hit film The Social Network, a young Mark Zuckerberg knows he has just launched something special when – out of the blue – a fellow Harvard student asks him to “Facebook me.” Simon Fraser University’s Justin Lee, a fourth-year accounting student in the Beedie School of Business who helped develop the pioneering new Beedie iPhone app, hasn’t quite experienced his Zuckerberg moment – at least not yet. “People have messaged me and said, […]

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Beedie School of Business News

At the popular seafood restaurant Coast, just a few blocks from SFU’s Segal Graduate School campus in downtown Vancouver, the lunch crowd is filing in. Diners line the big circular bar, working away at outsized platters of Atlantic lobster, Alaskan crab legs, sashimi and oysters. But for environmentally conscious consumers, the savory scene presents a thorny dilemma: How do you know today’s catch won’t be tomorrow’s endangered species? “Most people would like to know that […]

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Beedie School of Business News

That was the case for the Beedie School. A team of five SFU computer science and business students created Beedie’s app as a 13-week project for an interdisciplinary course, “Foundations of Innovation” in 2010.

Jan Kietzmann, who teaches the course, planned to make iPhone app design a general focus for the course. But he says it was a “natural progression” to shift the focus to creating a Beedie School app. The team was guided in the project by Kietzmann; Moscato; Dan Shapiro, the dean; and Andrew Gemino, associate dean of undergraduate programs and associate professor of management information systems. After the course ended, Moscato continued to work with the students to perfect the app before its release five months later in spring 2011.

“Although the project was introduced to the students from ‘up top,’ the students really loved the idea and took it upon themselves to identify where and how an app could help improve their lives as students,” says Kietzmann.

The students decided that the Beedie School app should be an information hub. They wanted it to integrate the school’s Twitter and Facebook feeds with links to announcements about current research from school faculty and graduate students, says Justin Lee, a member of the student team.

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Beedie School of Business News

Since its launch in 2010, the Apple iPad has garnered a global reputation for being among the most innovative consumer technology products. According to a new study from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, however, that reputation is equally deserved in business – especially as firms leverage the popular tablet and others like it to improve operations and boost sales or customer service.

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.

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