Even Business Schools are Slamming Amazon’s HQ2 “Contest”
Less than a week after rumors spilled out about the upcoming locations of its HQ2 headquarters were confirmed, the reality of the Amazon’s move to East coast isn’t going over well.
Surprising Political Divides, and More – Toronto News
Toronto’s finest business schools have seen some exciting developments this week, including new research from Rotman on the U.S. political divide. Check out some of this week’s highlights below.
Like Race and Class, Commute and Homeownership Divide Us – CityLab
Richard Florida, Professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and co-founder and editor of CityLab, recently wrote a piece for the publication that detailed how lifestyle and transit decisions impact America’s political divisions. The article references research performed by Florida and urban studies alum and instructor Patrick Adler. Adler’s research found that congressional districts with higher levels of homeownership were more likely to support Trump, as opposed to renters.
The political divide research also found that districts where the majority of people drive to work alone were more likely to vote for Trump, and areas where commutes were mostly via mass transit were likely to oppose his agenda. Perhaps surprisingly, commute and homeownership correlated as heavily with political stance as race and more so than education.
You can read more about Florida and Adler’s political divide research here.
‘Extraordinary’ Gift Will Help Establish Ivey Business Centre for Innovation – The London Free Press
John F. Wood, Western University Canada Ivey Business School 1964 graduate, has donated $7 million to his alma amter. The gift will go toward establishing the John F. Wood Centre for Innovation in Business Learning.
On the announcement, Mark Vandenbosch, Dean of the Ivey Business School, says:
“John’s extraordinarily generous gift will benefit students at Ivey and throughout management education for generations to come.”
For over 30 years, Wood served as president and CEO of W.C. Wood Company Limited, one of the largest manufacturers of freezers, dehumidifiers, and refrigerators in North America. Now, he has utilized the payoff from his years of work to give back to future generations of business students.
According to the London Free Press, Wood’s donation “will also be used to develop new courses and teaching programs, expand Ivey’s educational outreach to secondary school students, provide permanent administrative support for the centre, and establish a global symposium on innovation in business learning.”
You can read more about the donation here.
McMaster’s New Innovation Minor Sees Unexpectedly High Enrollment – Silhouette
This was the first year of the McMaster University Engineering School and the DeGroote School of Business joined to offer an innovation minor. McMaster faculty teamed up with The Forge, a Hamilton startup incubator, to develop the curriculum for the minor.
“The innovation minor is a nexus where academics meet startup culture,” says Monika Yazdanian, Director of The Forge. The minor has far exceeded enrollment expectations, due in part to the breadth of networking opportunities and hands-on learning embedded in the curriculum. Courses rely heavily on guest lecturers and, in their third and fourth years, students even get the opportunity to develop their own startup.
Learn more about McMaster’s innovation minor here.
Degroote Prof Receives Award, and More – Toronto News
Though most schools experience a summer lull, professors and alumni from Toronto’s finest business schools are continuing to give back to their communities and lead the way to positive change. Below, we’ve laid out some of the most exciting news stories from Toronto metro business schools this week.
The Difference Maker: Mahmut Parlar Honoured for 30 Years of Exceptional Research, Teaching, and Service – McMaster News
Mahmut Parlar, Business Research professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business has been tapped to receive the Canadian Operational Research Society’s Award of Merit. Mahmut is passionate about his job, and goes out of his was to make statistics fun. He even uses a beach ball exercise to start his grad classes. After 30 years of teaching and research, Parlar still feels passionate about his work.
Mahmut Parlar / Photo via degroote.mcmaster.ca
“They pay me to do what I love; I’m a lucky person,’’ Parlar said in an interview. The professor even commented that he continues to feel grateful and excited each time he sees that someone has cited his work. This is impressive seeing as his work has been cited upwards of 6,000 times.
“You always hear people say stats is boring, it’s dull. People take a stats course because it’s a requirement, not because they find it interesting or valuable … why not make it fun?” -Mahmut Parlar
You can read more about Parlar’s work and award here.
Cryptoeconomics and the Future of the Web – News@Ivey
Ryan Zurrer, who graduated from Western University Canada’s Ivey Business School in 2006, recently gave a talk on cryptoeconomics. The Ivey alum, who is now Principal and Venture Partner at Polychain Capital, talked about the sweeping importance of cryptoeconomics and blockchain 2.0, which started in Toronto. According to Zurrer, cryptoeconomics is “the study of how we use digital incentivization to drive specific resources and behaviours among self-interested agents on decentralized networks, thereby inherently delivering security and accelerating network effects.”
Cryptoeconomics contains elements of group psychology, cryptography, network security, finance, behavioral economics, computer science, law, and game theory.
“All we’re doing here is trying to change the fabric of commerce and law, and the way society functions and politics and the very nature of the organization. We don’t have to take ourselves so seriously about it. Have fun, enjoy this process even if you’re not technical, it doesn’t mean you can’t get involved in cryptoeconomic systems.”-Ryan Zurrer
You can read more about Zurrer’s talk here.
Toronto’s Deadly Car Crisis – Medium
Richard Florida, Director of Cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute in the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, recently wrote a Medium article in which he detailed the dire issues with driving in Toronto. Florida pointed out that Toronto’s rate of pedestrian deaths exceeds that of Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, D.C., Seattle, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Portland, and Buffalo.
Though Florida acknowledged that a car-centered economy was reasonable after WWII, he believed the model no longer makes sense. He cited cities like New York and London, which have grown beyond their “geographic threshold,” due to their reliance on alternate modes of transportation.
“Torontonians like to sound off on Americans’ inability to deal with guns and gun deaths. But Toronto’ s inability to deal with the car creates its own killing fields,” Florida writes.
You can read more about Toronto’s car crisis here.
Here Are the Front Runners For Amazon’s New HQ2 Campus
Last week, 20 cities in the United States and Canada were informed by Amazon that their bid to host the tech giant’s second headquarters, HQ2, was still being considered. Continue reading…
Thinkers50 Names Rotman Professor One of World’s Best Management Minds
Roger Martin, a professor and former dean at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, has been named the best management thinker in the world, according to Thinkers50.
