Beedie School of Business

Beedie School of Business News

The following is an excerpt from the full article published in the Globe and Mail on May 23, 2014.

Beedie School of Business News

Taking steps towards economic development in indigenous communities would appear to be solely beneficial to all concerned. Yet often when the subject is raised, many of those concerned have reservations. Why would something with implicit positive connotations raise such doubts?

Beedie School of Business News

Social entrepreneurship is undoubtedly a hot topic in business circles these days – indeed, the Beedie School of Business has a social innovation laboratory and venture incubator, RADIUS, dedicated to the subject. So what exactly is social entrepreneurship?

Beedie School of Business News

The prize for successfully starting a business can be exceptional, and tremendously rewarding – yet 75% of startups fail within the first year, as a result of failing to think their finance requirements through. So what is the secret to raising the capital required for businesses to make it past the hazardous early stages?

Beedie School of Business News

The Beedie School of Business’ interdisciplinary social innovation lab and venture incubator, RADIUS, in conjunction with Ashoka Canada, will host the second annual SFU Changemaker Showcase, a celebration of the brightest ideas and social innovators at Simon Fraser University. The SFU Changemaker Showcase will provide an opportunity to celebrate some of the brightest ideas and innovators at SFU who are working to foment positive change in the community and beyond. It will feature three TED-style […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published by BC Business on February 3, 2014, and features comment from Kate Dilworth, Adjunct Professor and Director of Learning Design at the Beedie School of Business. Executive Education used to be reserved for senior management. Today it’s geared toward helping entire organizations stay agile. Executive education is not about learning facts and theory; it’s about the spaces around the learning. That means developing innovation-enabling processes, relationship building, cross-sector exchanges and cultivating […]

Beedie School of Business News

For many startup businesses, overcoming a lack of resources often proves to be an insurmountable hurdle, resulting in failure. Entrepreneurs would do well to examine innovative methods of commercializing their ideas and taking the time to understand the role strategy plays in order to accelerate their ventures – thereby creating and capturing value in a competitive environment. Dr. Scott Stern, David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology and Chair of the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published in the Vancouver Sun on November 16, 201, and features comment from Beedie School of Business Assistant Professor Stephanie Bertels. The City of Vancouver is struggling with an increase of abandoned waste from a populace that either doesn’t know how — or isn’t willing — to get rid of their household items properly. The problem has become much worse in recent years after recycling fees were slapped on certain harder-to-dispose-of […]

Beedie School of Business News

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the need for strong leadership to steer organizations through troubled waters was never greater. Realizing this, Launi Skinner, CEO of one of Canada’s largest credit unions, First West Credit Union, made a conscious decision to develop her own leadership strategy – what she refers to as her “brand of leadership”. Skinner discussed this strategy and more with Bill Good on “The Chief Executives”, as part of an […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following extract is from an article published in the Globe and Mail on October 22, 2013, and features commentary from David Dunne, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Beedie School of Business, and chair of RADIUS. New initiatives are popping up on campuses across the country. This fall, the University of British Columbia in Burnaby, B.C., offered a new course, informally known as Entrepreneurship 101 and developed in collaboration with its Sauder School of Business, for […]

Beedie School of Business News

Companies and the CEO’s who helm them often follow similar paths, and that could well be said of Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) and its CEO-leader, David Labistour. From a simple start – providing mountain climbing equipment via a $5 co-op membership with $65 in operating capital – MEC now has 3.9 million shareholders, 1,500 employees in 210 offices, and annual sales exceeding $260 million. Today, MEC’s products and logo are known around the world. How […]

Beedie School of Business News

Why would a leading insurance organization look to McDonalds, Starbucks and Ikea for potential employees? Tina Osen, President and CEO of global insurance brokerage HUB International revealed the answer, along with other fascinating management insights, in the first interview of the fall 2013 series of CKNW 980’s “The Chief Executives”. The event is the result of an ongoing partnership between the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University and prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW […]

Beedie School of Business News

With the 2014 World Cup in Brazil less than a year away, reports of social unrest and mass protests among Brazilian citizens may suggest that soccer no longer holds the power to unite the nation to the extent that it once did. However new research from Beedie School of Business professors Jeremy Hall and Stelvia Matos suggests that the social inclusion benefits Brazilian soccer makes possible might provide a light at the end of the […]

Beedie School of Business News

Contact: Derek Moscato, Beedie School of Business, 778.782.5038; drmoscat@sfu.ca One of the world’s largest gatherings of scholars devoted to international business will converge on Simon Fraser University and host city Vancouver next summer. SFU’s Beedie School of Business was named as host institution for the 2014 summit during the recent 2013 annual meeting of the Academy of International Business (AIB) in Istanbul, Turkey. The event features a combination of academic plenaries, panels, and papers devoted to global management […]

Beedie School of Business News

One of the world’s largest gatherings of scholars devoted to international business will converge upon Simon Fraser University and host city Vancouver next summer, it was announced recently in Istanbul. At the 2013 Annual Meeting for the Academy of International Business (AIB) in Turkey, SFU’s Beedie School of Business was named as host institution for the 2014 edition of the summit, which features a combination of academic plenaries, panels, and papers devoted to global management […]

Beedie School of Business News

In 2012, the spring semester of undergraduate business case competitions saw Beedie School of Business teams achieve relatively strong results, including a podium finish for the APEX Business-IT Global Case Challenge team. Despite the admirable performances, however, the consensus was that the school’s students were capable of achieving even more. Fast forward one year, and the 2013 spring semester saw Beedie School of Business teams achieve podium finishes at every single undergraduate case competition entered: […]

Beedie School of Business News

RADIUS, the Beedie School of Business’ new interdisciplinary social innovation lab and venture incubator, has appointed Donovan Woollard as Director of RADIUS Ventures. RADIUS Ventures aims to become a world-leading incubator and accelerator program for impact-focused ventures, nurturing the best and brightest ideas from SFU and around the globe. With financial support from Vancity Credit Union and SFU, it will seed the ecosystem with high potential social ventures, and help to maximize the collective impact […]

Beedie School of Business News

Research from two Beedie School of Business PhD students has become a top paper on the subject of open innovation for 2013, with almost 500 downloads on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a leading repository of business academic papers. The paper, “The Theory of Crowd Capital”, was authored by Beedie PhD students Prashant Shukla and John Prpić, and examines the increasing number of organizations using IT to engage dispersed populations of individuals for knowledge […]

Beedie School of Business News

Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business has announced another first with its MBA program at Surrey, one of Canada’s fastest-growing major cities and an important economic hub for the south Fraser region and British Columbia. The part-time Surrey MBA program will meet the needs of a growing number of managers, entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking to enhance their business skillset without skipping a beat in their professional careers. Featuring the same curriculum as SFU’s […]

Beedie School of Business News

The Beedie School of Business accounted for more than a quarter of the recipients at the Surrey Board of Trade’s Top 25 Under 25 Awards, with seven awards presented to Beedie students and alumni. The annual awards, now in their third year, recognize business and community minded people under the age of 25 who are either working in Surrey or working on a related project in or for the city, and are considered role models […]

Beedie School of Business News

The spring series of CKNW 980’s “The Chief Executives” continued with Tracy Redies, President and CEO of credit union Coast Capital Savings, discussing her journey from selling shoes to leading of one of the country’s largest credit unions 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 […]

Beedie School of Business News

Organizations in a number of business sectors are still struggling to embed sustainability into their culture. While this is not a challenge that will be accomplished overnight, it is one that Beedie School of Business assistant professor Stephanie Bertels is attempting to unravel. Bertels has a long-standing interest in sustainability, specifically how organizations can develop and implement innovative strategies for a sustainable future. Her latest research has resulted in tangible outcomes that are already helping […]

Beedie School of Business News

For Business Career Expo 2013 Platinum Sponsors, the Chartered Accountants & Certified Management Accountants of BC, the event offered more than the chance to talk to some enthusiastic students about employment opportunities. It allowed them to spread the word about a new accounting designation – one that will soon become the preeminent program in Canada when it launches later this year. The new Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation is the result of a forthcoming merger […]

Beedie School of Business News

The spring series of CKNW 980’s “The Chief Executives” continued as Margot Micallef, founder and president of investment firm Oliver Capital Partners, answered CKNW host Bill Good’s questions on business and leadership 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 […]

Beedie School of Business News

Dianne Cyr, a professor of management information systems at the Beedie School of Business has received an award for most cited paper from the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. The prestigious award is given to the paper with the highest number of citations (excluding self-citations) between 2010 and 2012, and is a strong measure of the paper’s reach within the academic community and beyond. The winning paper, ‘‘Colour appeal in website design within and across […]

Beedie School of Business News

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

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published by The Vancouver Sun on February 14, 2013 Modern technology means workers must learn to cope — and thrive — under an an avalanche of data coming from all sides By Vivian Luk, Special to The Sun    The working world as we know it is changing fast. And the graduates of today better be prepared for it. Graham Dodd knows that just by watching his children do their homework […]

Beedie School of Business News

Fusion Kitchen, a community-minded entrepreneurship initiative that was founded by two Simon Fraser University students and fostered in the Beedie School of Business Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator, recently hosted a special event focused on the culinary traditions of Pakistan. Entitled  “A Taste of Pakistan”, the gathering of gourmands took place on February 8. In groups of three, Beedie students, and alumni, as well as newcomers to Fusion Kitchen, worked together to cook up a five-course Pakistani meal […]

Beedie School of Business News

The Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University has announced the appointment of Nelson Lah, Partner and Director of leading IT and business process services provider CGI, as Chair of the Business Technology Management (BTM) Advisory Board. Lah has a history of strategic leadership, innovative approaches, mentorship, and community-university service. Before joining CGI, he worked as Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director at the BC Ministry of Citizens’ Services. The BTM certificate is aimed […]

Beedie School of Business News

Opinion: Issue of state-owned enterprises erratic, unpredictable. By Jack Austin, Vancouver Sun At a recent symposium hosted at SFU’s Beedie School of Business and the Jack Austin Centre for Asia Pacific Business Studies, I invoked the baseball analogy of a “diving catch” to describe the Harper government’s recent response to offshore bids for Canadian assets, including the somewhat contentious takeover by Chinese government-controlled CNOOC of Calgary’s Nexen. That’s because the issue of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) […]

Beedie School of Business News

A group of undergraduate students at the Beedie School of Business have been helping Vancouver achieve its target of becoming the world’s greenest city by 2020 through a class project with a distinctly sustainable theme. This past fall, students in the class Business 443: New Product Development, taught by Lisa Papania, were tasked with conceptualizing, designing, producing, marketing and selling a product or service involving used textiles and clothing. The project encouraged the students to […]

Beedie School of Business News

The fall series of the Chief Executives at the Beedie School of Business concluded with Karen Flavelle, President and CEO of Purdy’s Chocolates, sharing her experiences as head of Western Canada’s largest chocolate retailer with a live audience at the Segal Graduate School of Business. 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 series of live […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published in November 2012 by ACCN Canadian Chemical News. By Tyler Irving Ian McCarthy explains why faster isn’t always better when it comes to managing a biotech business. As challenging as it is, scientific discovery is really only the first step in a biotechnology breakthrough. Building a strong, well-managed business that can nurture the innovation through to market is crucial. Yet, for those most comfortable in the lab, the idea of […]

Beedie School of Business News

Peter Tingling, Associate Professor, Management Information Systems at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, was a guest speaker at prominent Vancouver forum the Public Salon recently. The Public Salons are a continuing series of gatherings hosted by the Global Civic Policy Society, a non-profit organization committed research and reflection on civil society, local government and citizenship. Founded by former Mayor of Vancouver Sam Sullivan, the Public Salons are used to present public policy ideas […]

Beedie School of Business News

In March of 2011, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, Atlanta-based insurance giant Aflac Inc. was forced to confront a marketing fiasco with global implications. The voice of their famous Aflac duck, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, had used his Twitter account to make tasteless jokes about the natural disaster that wiped out entire cities on Japan’s northeast coast. The online backlash against Gottfried’s social media outburst – and ultimately Aflac […]

Beedie School of Business News

Tom Gaglardi, CEO of Northland Properties Group and owner of the Dallas Stars NHL franchise, shared with a live audience at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business his experiences as head of one of Canada’s largest hospitality organizations, as well as the new owner of one of North America’s top hockey franchises. The event was part of the Beedie School of Business’ partnership with prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW, which sees SFU’s downtown Vancouver […]

Beedie School of Business News

  The following op-ed article was authored by Daniel Shapiro and published in the Vancouver Sun on October 14, 2012. Opinion: Province should be home to high-growth entrepreneurs, but Canada lacks the necessary network of resources. By Daniel Shapiro, Dean of the Beedie School of Business. Ryan Holmes, founder of Invoke and the CEO of HootSuite, one of British Columbia’s fastest-growing start-ups, made something of a revelation at a recent presentation at the Beedie School […]

EQUIS

by David Rubeli Shauna Jones and I attended the 2012 Academy of Management (AoM) meetings in Boston, MA. In this article, I share five conference highlights that are relevant to the Beedie B.BA program and graduate programs at the Segal School: 1. Deep explorations of reflection and action learning at MIT Sloan 2. Henry Mintzberg’s inspiring MED Division Keynote 3. Clayton Christensen and David Teece on innovation in business schools 4. Exciting research on experiential […]

Beedie School of Business News

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 […]

Beedie School of Business News

For Beedie School of Business student Rachelle Hay, SFU’s MBA program has delivered everything that she hoped for and more. And as the end of the program approaches, she is looking forward to taking her career to the next level. Hay recently learned that she has been successful in obtaining a role at Orbis Access (Canada) Limited, and will start the position immediately after the MBA program concludes later this year. Yet like many students, […]

Beedie School of Business News

Business students from Italy spent July in Vancouver as part of a unique collaboration between SFU’s Beedie School of Business and the Università Bocconi – and were given a crash course in Canadian culture as part of their visit. The visiting students from Bocconi, located in the fashion capital of Italy, Milan, and regarded as Italy’s top business and economics school, were paired with SFU students from the “Business 492: Management of Fashion Companies,” class […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published by BC Business on July 3, 2012. Traditional sources of revenue for charities are drying up, but putting society’s biggest issues in the hands of socially minded entrepreneurs is a tricky business. On the cheery, yellow walls of the Downtown Eastside’s Potluck Café are the faces of several of its customers, captured in a black-and-white instant. Their complicated eyes and the deep lines in their faces tell sad stories of […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published by The Globe and Mail on July 12. As a third-year commerce student at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, Marcel Glaesser spent an academic semester at the University of Mannheim last year. After completing his studies in Germany, he decided to stay longer and landed a six-month contract with BMW in Munich. “The coolest thing is that I got to do so many things,” he recalls, citing marketing-related assignments […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published by BC Business on July 3, 2012. When John Rose, CEO of Nuheat Industries Ltd. in Richmond, learned that the mother of a Sudanese employee had suffered a stroke and the man had not seen her in years, he arranged to fly the employee home. When the executive asked what Singa – the man’s remote village of 3,500 people in the Sudan – needed, his employee told him: a well. […]

Beedie School of Business News

The following article was published by The Globe and Mail on July 5, 2012. Unlike in North America where students typically look like they want to leave 10 minutes before the scheduled end of a class, in Beijing Majid Ghorbani’s lectures often run 10 minutes overtime, or longer. “Students in China can’t seem to get enough. They make me feel like they really want to learn,” says the recently transplanted Vancouverite, now an assistant professor […]

Beedie School of Business News

The 2013 JDC West business schools showdown is six months away, but the SFU Beedie team is already hard at work to prepare for the prestigious competition. Over the past few weeks, candidates for SFU Beedie’s JDC West academic team partook in the new case competition cohort, taught by instructor Tara Immell. The students did practice cases and presentations to develop their understanding of how to analyse cases and work as a team. The team […]

Beedie School of Business News

As a result of economic uncertainty and a less-than-optimal employment outlook both globally and locally, some students at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University are taking an alternative path to growing their careers. In the process, they are making hands-on contributions to the economy and society through entrepreneurial activity, community engagement, and international development. A case in point is Education Generation, founded by Shawn Smith, a Beedie School of Business alumnus and […]

Beedie School of Business News

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 […]

Beedie School of Business News

A new initiative at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business will give its CGA co-op students the chance to participate in a co-op work term on the sunny island of Barbados. The Beedie School of Business & CGA Co-op Global Careers Program is part of a new partnership between the Beedie School of Business, CGA-BC and CGA Caribbean. It will allow for one SFU CGA co-op student to be placed in a work term […]

Beedie School of Business News

Will Mitchell didn’t come by his decision to attend business school lightly. As an 18 year old, he was pouring lead slag into a furnace for a living at a lead-zinc smelter in Trail, BC when he decided to heed the call of higher learning – from Simon Fraser University.

Mitchell, whose parents were both teachers, grew up in the scenic West Kootenay communities of Trail and Fruitvale. Geographically, he was hundreds of kilometres from the West Coast and the top of Burnaby Mountain. Psychologically, the distance was even further.

But the lure of SFU was neither dulled nor diminished by distance or geography.

At the time, Simon Fraser University was a young institution with a reputation for flexibility and radicalism. The young Mitchell couldn’t resist the mix – and in a matter of days he had made the transition from the smoke-belching smelter to classes in political science, sociology, anthropology, English and math.

“At SFU,” he says, “you could do very interesting things.”