Beedie School of Business News

Beedie School of Business alumna Salina Siu has been shortlisted for Tourism Australia’s The Best Jobs in the World competition.

Beedie School of Business alumna Salina Siu has been given an opportunity all graduates seek – the chance to land her dream job.

Siu is one of 150 people selected from over 600,000 applicants to advance to the second round of Tourism Australia’s The Best Jobs in the World competition. With six positions available, Siu is the only Canadian to make the 25-person shortlist for the Chief Funster position.

The Chief Funster position is based in Sydney and requires the winner to attend and review all the festivals and events the city has to offer over the course of the six-month assignment. The position comes with a $50,000 (AUS) salary, along with an additional $50,000 (AUS) to cover expenses.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and would be a crazy adventure,” says Siu, who previously served as social media intern in the Beedie School’s marketing department as well as stints with Invoke Media and SAP. “I am so passionate about social media, and to work in this field in such a great environment would be an amazing experience.” Keep reading…

Tags: AIESEC SFU, Alumni, Andrew Petter, BBA, Beedie School of Business, best job in the world, Chief Funster, communications, entrepreneurship, Invoke Media, Marketing, Salina Siu, SAP, sfu, social media, Tourism Australia, YouTube

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 Sun on November 24, 2012.

BY GILLIAN SHAW, VANCOUVER SUN

For some, inventing is easier than selling

Mitacs Accelerate program is a national partnership that aims to develop Canada’s next generation of innovators

Tags: Arvind Gupta, bed bugs, Beedie School of Business, business innovation, collaboration, Elizabeth Velasque, experiential learning, internship, Kibooco Interactive, Marketing, MBA, Mitacs Accelerate, pharmaceuticals, Research, science, SemiosBio, sfu, Sophos, The Vancouver Sun

A new campaign launches today at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business aimed at encouraging students to make the most of their student life. The campaign challenges students to get more from the opportunities available to them both inside and outside the classroom – to be engaging, to be exceptional, and ultimately, to “Be More”.

The Be More campaign aims to encourage students to seek out opportunities throughout their undergraduate degree to strengthen their résumé, and differentiate themselves from the crowd as they prepare to enter the job market after graduation.

At the core of the campaign is a call for students to students to take full advantage of everything the Beedie School of Business has to offer, to be open to discovering new interests and develop transferrable skills in doing so. It asks students to become fully engaged with their education and strive to want more, do more, get more and be more while they earn their degree. Keep reading…

Tags: Andrew Gemino, BBA, Be Challenged, Be Connected, Be Driven, Be Engaged, Be Global, Be Inspired, Be More, Beedie School of Business, Casey Dorin, education, Marketing, Student Engagement Office, student experience, undergraduate

Ryan Holmes (left), founder and CEO of HootSuite Media, being interviewed by CKNW host Bill Good (right).

Ryan Holmes, founder and CEO of social media management system HootSuite, sat in front of a live audience at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business on September 27 to share his experience as head of one of Canada’s largest tech start-ups.

The event was part of the Beedie School of Business’ partnership with prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW, which sees SFU’s downtown Vancouver campus play host to “The Chief Executives”, a series of live radio interviews conducted by CKNW host Bill Good, profiling some of the country’s top executives.

Eschewing typical CEO attire in favour of trainers, jeans and t-shirt, Holmes cut a relaxed figure as he joked with members of the audience and host Good throughout the interview. Keen to engage with the audience, Holmes at one point asked for a show of hands to survey the number of HootSuite users present in the room, prompting Good to joke that Holmes was taking over his show. Keep reading…

Tags: Apple, Beedie School of Business, Bill Gates, Bill Good, CKNW, entrepreneurship, Facebook, hootsuite, innovation, Invoke Media, Marketing, Ryan Holmes, Simon Fraser University, social media, start-ups, technology, The Chief Executives, Twitter

David Dunne, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Beedie School of Business

Whether it’s in the delivery of state-of-the-art smart phones or innovative health care, design thinking is an increasingly critical element for businesses and organizations in 2012. For David Dunne, Beedie School of Business Adjunct Senior Fellow, the intersection of design and business translates into major challenges and opportunities for managers, entrepreneurs and other leaders.

Design thinking is defined as approaching management problems just as designers approach design problems. Though it has been traditionally associated with product and service design, it also has important implications for management, something recognized increasingly by both academic research and the business press.

Keep reading…

Tags: advertising, Americas MBA for Executives, branding, consumer behaviour, consumer brands, consumer goods, David Dunne, design, design thinking, EMBA in Aboriginal Business and Leadership, health care, innovation, Management of Technology MBA, Marketing, MOT MBA, Research, Rotman School of Management, Unilever

Olympic sponsors should watch out for the inhabitants of picturesque English villages - they’re the most dangerous and ruthless ambushers of them all.

The following article was published by Forbes on June 14, 2012.

Former Intel CEO Andy Grove claimed that only the paranoid survive. So should the mighty Olympic Committee watch out for the villagers in the picturesque village of Wye, 35 minutes from the site of the upcoming London Olympics?

Undetered by the heavy-handed restrictions that prevent UK citizens from using the Olympic logo to celebrate the world’s largest sporting event, the local church group has just staged a flower festival with displays that capture many of the sporting events in a dazzling array of colour and perfume. To avoid any legal wrangling they called the event “The Games 2012″.

Elsewhere, Twitter has cracked down over online infringement of the Olympic logo after the Games’ organisers, Locog, complained that an activist groups were using the trademark 2012 image to parody the London sporting festival. And local authorities have been bemused by the bewildering array of restrictions that prevent them from referring to anything remotely “Olympic” when describing the torch that’s being carried through their streets.

What is intended to be a national celebration has turned into a battle of trademarks, and protection of the official Olympic sponsors, who have admittedly paid out large sums of money to appear alongside the iconic 5 rings. Keep reading…

Tags: ambush marketing, Beedie School of Business, Leyland Pitt, Li Ning affair, Marketing, Michael Parent, Olympics, Research, sfu, SFU Beedie, Simon Fraser University, Summer Olympics

As the Miami Heat professional basketball team duels with the Oklahoma City Heat Thunder in the NBA Finals for the league’s biggest prize, new academic research from SFU’s Beedie School of Business is putting the spotlight on the business thinking that brought the Miami team together. Two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Lebron James’ decision to play with a higher-profile Heat team and all-star teammates shows sound marketing and career-management acumen, according to the newly-published article focused on the evolution and importance of star status for today’s professional athletes.

In order to maximize their earnings and endorsements, today’s celebrity athletes — from NBA’s James to soccer star David Beckham and football quarterback Peyton Manning — need to be mindful of the evolution of their star status. That in turn has major implications for the teams they choose to play for, and the teams they turn down or leave behind.

So what makes a star shine even brighter in the world of pro sports? It’s a combination of not only personal performances and team records, but also includes the markets that athletes play in and the star calibre of the athletes they compete with.

The study, “Investigating the evolution of star status in professional team sports,” describes the rise and fall of celebrated athletes using data from the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1987 to 2008. Published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, it was authored by professors Yupin Yang of the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Mengze Shi from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. To measure star status, they measured the number and share of votes received by pro basketball players for the annual NBA all-star game.

It turns out that the careers of star athletes have a natural life cycle. In the early years, individual performance is more important – but as time passes, winning a team championship becomes more imperative than personal statistics or accolades.

The results of the research, which arguably vindicate Lebron James for managing his career so deliberately, show that stars should play for a winning team – which not only helps an athlete rise up to being a star, but also extends a star athlete’s playing career. Also in James’ favour, Profs. Yang and Shi maintain that star teammates can help each other. An athlete’s popularity is strongly associated with the popularity of teammates, and explains some blockbuster deals in recent years that have brought stars together to form star teams.

There is risk associated with this kind of career movement, as the researchers point out: Stars who move to star-laden teams could be eclipsed by more popular star teammates and eventually lose star status. Depending on his team’s performances in the coming years, this could apply to James’ teammate Chris Bosh, who was already a star in his own right when he left the Toronto Raptors to join the star-studded Miami Heat.

The researchers’ results can be useful to managers of professional sports teams in managing their star athletes. According to the researchers, “if a team intends to develop a new star, the team should build up the player’s individual performance statistics by providing him with more support and playing time.”

From the perspective of sports franchise managers, teams may leverage their assets such as a large fan base, current star players and a winning record in attracting or retaining a star player.

Finally, their results have implications for companies such as Adidas and Nike, who employ star athletes as endorsers of their brands. “By knowing the evolution patterns of athletes and the impacts of surrounding factors, corporate brands can make better informed decisions regarding which athlete to sign and what endorsement contracts to offer.”

Surprisingly, despite the prevalence of star athletes and the enormous economic value of these celebrity brands in the marketplace, such marketing-focused empirical research on star athletes to date has been scarce.

Tags: branding, career, Chris Bosh, David Beckham, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Lebron James, Marketing, Mengze Shi, Miami Heat, NBA, Oklahoma City Thunder, Peyton Manning, Rotman School of Management, Yupin Yang

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. Keep reading…

Tags: Green Men, International China Concern, Marketing, sustainability, Sustainability Festival, SustainableSFU, Todd green

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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