Beedie School of Business News

The IBECC team. From left to right: Winnie So, Laura Anderson, Erin Lane, Sophie Collins, and Negar Hadavi.

A team of MBA students from the Beedie School of business has dominated the field at the prestigious Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC), taking first place in the 10-minute presentation and winning silver in the 30-minute presentation.

The team, consisting of SFU MBA students Sophie Collins, Negar Hadavi, Laura Anderson and Erin Lane, and Management of Technology MBA student Winnie So, emerged victorious from a strong field of 25 competing teams from across the globe, including such distinguished institutions as the University of Oxford, INSEAD, Dartmouth and Copenhagen Business School.

The IBECC, held this year at Loyola Marymount University in San Diego, California from May 8 to 10, is the oldest and most-recognized business ethics competition of its kind. In addition to the competition, it allows students to learn about organizational ethics through conference sessions and networking with the world’s leading ethics and compliance officers. Keep reading…

Tags: Barrick Gold, business ethics, Case competition, Copenhagen Business School, Dartmouth, Erin Lane, experiential learning, IBECC, INSEAD, Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition, Kathleen Burke, Laura Anderson, Management of Technology MBA, MBA, MOT MBA, Negar Hadavi, Sophie Collins, Stephanie Bertels, University of Oxford, Winnie So

Brian Hill, CEO of Aritzia, being interviewed in front of a live audience at the Beedie School of Business by CKNW host Bill Good.

The spring series of CKNW 980’s “The Chief Executives” concluded with Brian Hill, CEO and co-founder of fashion retailer Aritzia, discussing his hands-on approach to the fashion retail industry with CKNW host Bill Good in front of a live audience at the Segal Graduate School.

The event was part of an ongoing partnership between the Beedie School of Business and prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW News Talk 980 to bring leadership and business insights from some of Canada’s top executives to SFU’s downtown Vancouver campus.

As a third generation fashion retailer, Hill grew up working in the family business, which Good assumed negated the need for him to ask what his first job was. Hill revealed however, that one summer he worked in a role that to this day remains his favourite job – a garbage man. Keep reading…

Tags: Aritzia, Beedie School of Business, Bill Good, Brian Hill, CKNW, CKNW News Talk 980, fashion industry, Leadership, management, MBA, retail, Segal Graduate School, strategy, The Chief Executives

The following article was published by the Globe and Mail on April 30.

Elicia Maine, Academic Director of SFU MOT MBA program

Business education has an important role to play in boosting Canada’s edge in the digital age by combining masters of business administration (MBA) programs with technology management skills, industry experts say.

Released in April, the World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index ranked Canada 12th out of 144 countries, down three spots from the previous year. The point of the index is to illustrate which countries’ economies are well poised to benefit from technology-based industry. Those that ranked higher – such as Finland, the United States and Singapore – were credited with having friendly business environments and top education systems.

Canada has a skilled work force, a high-level education system and a growing economy, like the other high-ranking countries. But business specialists say the country needs to expand its reach in the global technology market, create more business leaders with specific technology management skills and strengthen the bonds between business education and industry in order to move up the ranks.

The study highlights a growing business area in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, says Elicia Maine, academic director at Simon Fraser University’s Management of Technology MBA program, though she views the rankings with some skepticism, because it compares countries with what she calls incomparable economies and education systems.

Her graduates are already tapping the ICT market, she says. “About 50 per cent of our cohort is either in software, ICT, social media or gaming sectors, all things that could broadly be in ICT. And they find great value in the customized MBA program, that can really go in-depth on the strategic issues around commercializing new technologies,” she adds.

Keep reading…

Tags: Beedie School of Business, Information and communication technology, Management Technology, Masters, MBA, MOT MBA, SFU Beedie, Simon Fraser University

Gregg Saretsky, CEO of WestJet, being interviewed in front of a live audience at the Beedie School of Business by CKNW host Bill Good.

The spring series of CKNW 980’s “The Chief Executives” continued with Gregg Saretsky, President and CEO of Canadian airline WestJet, sharing his vision for employee engagement with CKNW host Bill Good in front of a live audience at the Segal Graduate School.

The event was part of an ongoing partnership between the Beedie School of Business and prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW News Talk 980 to bring leadership and business insights from some of Canada’s top executives to SFU’s downtown Vancouver campus.

With a packed and enthusiastic crowd watching, Saretsky opened by sharing his career path with Good, explaining how his father worked in the airline industry and that he had grown up taking advantage of his father’s airline privileges by travelling to a variety of places from a young age. Keep reading…

Tags: airline industry, Beedie School of Business, Bill Good, Canadian economy, CKNW, CKNW News Talk 980, employee engagement, employee ownership, Gregg Saretsky, Harvard, Leadership, management, MBA, return on investment, Segal Graduate School, strategy, The Chief Executives, WestJet, WestJet Encore

The Beedie School of Business HEC MBA Sustainability Challenge team. From left to right: Colin Knudsen, Geordan Hankinson, Erin Lane and Andrew Lee

A team of MBA students from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business have captured first place at the HEC Montréal MBA Sustainability Challenge case competition.

The team, consisting of MBA students Erin Lane, Geordan Hankinson, Colin Knudsen, and Andrew Lee, emerged victorious from a field of 12 competing universities from across Canada, the US and Denmark.

The competition, held at HEC Montréal in Québec on March 16, seeks to demonstrate the relevance of addressing corporate social responsibility issues in the management of successful enterprises, and featured a panel of guest judges from industry and academia Keep reading…

Tags: Andrew Lee, aviation, Beedie School of Business, biofuels, case competitions, Colin Knudsen, CSR, Erin Lane, experiential learning, Geordan Hankinson, HEC Montréal, HEC Montréal MBA Sustainability Challenge, MBA, Stephanie Bertels, sustainability

The following article was published by the Globe and Mail on March 13.

Beedie School of Business Professor Ian McCarthy

Not every student who shows up for an undergraduate business degree or an MBA wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. But a whole lot of them do.

That’s why business schools are increasingly offering courses and programs that teach innovation – both in an entrepreneurial context and as an approach to business in general.

They do so in the face of an ongoing debate over whether you can teach people to be outliers in business at all.

“It boils down to a nature-versus-nurture debate,” says Ajay Agrawal, the Peter Munk professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “We take the view that whether or not there is a nature component, there are a set of tools that can make one more effective.”

In many ways, the teachability factor is a debate that business schools feel targets them unfairly.

“If you believe music can be taught, sports can be taught, then the same logic applies to business schools and innovation,” says Ian McCarthy, professor and Canadian Research Chair in technology and operations management at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. Keep reading…

Tags: Beedie School of Business, creativity, entrepreneurship, experiential learning, Ian McCarthy, innovaiton, Mark Zuckerberg, MBA, Rotman School of Management, Simon Fraser University, technology and operations management

The following article was published by the Globe and Mail on March 12.

Elicia Maine, Academic Director of the Management of Technology MBA program discussing bio nano research with collaborators V.J. Thomas and Armstrong Murira
Photo credit: Barry Shell

Nanotechnology (the manipulation of matter on a molecular or smaller scale) and biotechnology (the manipulation of living matter) are both hot fields of innovation. Combine the two, and you have a whole new business sector, according to a new study led by a Simon Fraser University researcher.

From stem cell medicine to biological computers, this combination is a rich breeding ground for new ventures, says lead study author, Elicia Maine, academic director of the management technology MBA program at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. The study, done in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of New South Wales, is called Global Bio-Nano Firms: Exploiting the Confluence of Technologies. It identified, classified and analyzed more than 500 of the world’s first companies in the emerging bio-nano sector.

The study found that, between 2005 and 2011, the number of bio-nano firms nearly doubled to 507, with more than 100 of them emerging in North America, according to Simon Fraser University. Keep reading…

Tags: AT&T, Beedie School of Business, biotechnology, Elicia Maine, Globe and Mail, innovation, Management of Technology MBA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MBA, MOT MBA, Nanosphere, nanotechnology, Simon Fraser University, stem cell, University of New South Wales

The Beedie School of Business Whitman Case Competition team. From left to right: Karina Burrows, Denis Mikhailov, Danielle Friesen and Dominik Debois

A team of Beedie School of Business MBA students will travel to Syracuse University, New York, on March 22 to compete in the finals of the prestigious Whitman Case Competition. The team earned their spot after their preliminary executive summary placed them in the top six from almost 30 teams.

The annual competition, run by the Whitman School of Management, draws teams from invited schools across North America. Competing teams have only a short time to submit an executive summary, answering three questions about a real-world business case.

The Beedie team members, Karina Burrows, Dominik Debois, Danielle Friesen, and Denis Mikhailov, first had to show themselves as viable candidates by submitting their own executive summaries, detailing suitability for the competition and external case competition experience. Keep reading…

Tags: Beedie School of Business, business case, Case competition, case competition club, Danielle Friesen, Denis Mikhailov, Dominik Debois, experiential learning, Graduate Business Student Association, Karina Burrows, MBA, Whitman Case Competition, Whitman School of Management

The following article was published by The Globe and Mail on March 8, 2013.

By David Dunne, Adjunct Senior Fellow at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business.

On the afternoon of March 6, 2012, five men drove their snowmobiles to Grizzly Lake, in the Powder Mountain area south of Whistler, B.C. The weather was clear, fresh and calm, and the snow-covered mountains spread invitingly before them. Though there had been some avalanches in the area recently, the conditions looked ideal.

In a practice known as high-marking, two of the sledders rode up a steep slope, intending to turn around and descend when they could climb no further. One went right, while the other decided to go left.

It was a decision that cost the second sledder his life. The activity triggered a large avalanche; by the time his companions could find him and dig him out, he had no pulse. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Keep reading…

Tags: Beedie School of Business, David Dunne, experiential learning, finance, Globe and Mail, Marketing, MBA, Simon Fraser University, snowmobile, social entrepreneurship, social innovation, social problems, strategic planning, teaching models, Whistler

The following article was published by The Vancouver Courier by Stanley Tromp, contributing writer.

Three students from SFU, Danielle Friesen (far left), Mohammad Nasiri and Joanna Kipp created a web out of yarn outside Marpole Library last week to raise awareness for Marpole Place Neighbourhood House web programs.
Photograph by: Dan Toulgoet , Vancouver Courier

A group of business students has created a social media plan to reduce the isolation of seniors living alone in Marpole.

Last week, the students designed a “web” of coloured yarn in front of Marpole library on Granville Street near 70th Avenue, to symbolize both physical community connections and the Internet’s interconnected web. Passersby wrote their names on papers hung onto the yarn while the students explained to them the purpose of Forever Connected, a plan started by the Marpole Place Neighbourhood House to reduce the isolation of the community’s seniors.

“Many people had heard of the neighbourhood house before and were interested in learning about more ways to get involved,” said the web’s creator, SFU business student Joanna Kipp. “The web looked so great that we ended up leaving it up. Despite the damp weather, it turned out to be a great success and is hopefully the first of many for Marpole Place.”

Kipp’s group members, who are all MBA students at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, include Danielle Friesen, Geordan Hankinson, Negar Hadavi, and Mohammad Nasiri. As part of their marketing and information systems classes, they were asked to design a social media strategy for a local nonprofit. They chose Marpole Place Neighbourhood House.

“We have done a lot of projects during our MBA, but I have to say that this has definitely been the most interesting and exciting one so far,” said Kipp.

Older people generally use social media less than do younger people, and some have no computer at home. “That was our challenge,” Kipp added. “If someone is isolated, they’ll likely not leave their house much, but they will know someone who does, and that person will come down the street, and also uses social media. So you can reach some people you couldn’t otherwise reach.”

She says that in future, seniors could find more companionship through online chat groups and forums. Some think that social media is so fast paced that it’s only suited for a younger generation, but Kipp says no one is too old to learn the online world. Two years ago her parents began texting and now do it all the time. Marpole Place also has computer skills workshops for seniors.

The Forever Connected Club is looking for volunteers over 55 who like people and to become a Forever Connected Volunteer Ambassador. The club provides opportunities for older adults to go on bus trips, be picked up for community meals, join in activities and make new friends. The project is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program. Call Marpole Place at 604-266-5301.

More information can be found at Marpole Place’s new blog at marpoleplacenh.blogspot.ca, its Facebook Marpole Place page and on Twitter at @MarpoleplaceNH.

Tags: marpole, marpole place, MBA, SFU MBA, social media, vancouver courier