Minding the gap: Bridging Computing Science and Business Studies with an Interdisciplinary Innovation Challenge

Minding the gap: Bridging Computing Science and Business Studies with an Interdisciplinary Innovation Challenge

For today’s information technology organization, working in teams across functional and even organizational boundaries has become an integral part of every project. When asked about these projects, practitioners regularly report on how grave differences between business professionals and tech- nology teams have negatively affected project performance. The serious gap between how the two sides think, talk and work is systemic already in the training and education of both Business and Computer Science students at the univer- sity level. This paper describes the design of a competitive SFU Innovation Challenge which aims to bridge that gap by tasking interdisciplinary groups to create iPhone application prototypes and related business innovation roadmaps. This document then summarizes the objectives of the SFU Inno- vation Challenge, and reports on the difficulties and posi- tive results that materialized when students combined their technological problem- solving techniques and managerial strategies for effectively confronting real-world problems.