Contact:
Eric Gedajlovic, Beedie School of Business, 604.376.0482, eric_gedajlovic@sfu.ca
Derek Moscato, Beedie School of Business, 778.782.5038, derek_moscato@sfu.ca
Scott McLean, SFU Vancouver, 778.782.5151, srmclean@sfu.ca

MBA Students from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business will be pounding the pavement on Wednesday morning, racing from business to business in an ‘Apprentice’ style competition called Opportunity Quest, aimed at engaging with and providing solutions to local merchants.

Coordinated by Beedie professor Eric Gedajlovic through a partnership with the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, the students will be generating ideas after discussing operational challenges with local community businesses from the West Hastings core.

“This is an opportunity for our students to get out and engage with the business community, and to develop applicable ideas and solutions to problems that are facing local business owners,” says Gedajlovic.

“Everyone is really excited because these projects could really encompass anything, it might be a marketing problem, a social media issue, and then it becomes not only about the idea, but also about looking at solutions and figuring out how to get to that endpoint.”

On Wednesday, the program’s 52 students will receive an introduction from Gedjalovic and the DVBIA at 9:30 a.m., before heading out into downtown Vancouver from 10 a.m. until noon in teams of four to interact with the 125 businesses in their designated zone. The students will then be given two hours to work on their ideas, before presenting to a panel of judges from the business community at 2 p.m.

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