Benjamin Barraza

"Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope or dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our Nation."
-President John F. Kennedy, 1961

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Benjamin Barraza, PhD MBA MRes

Senior Manager, Application Development

Adjunct Faculty, John B. Goddard School of Business & Economics
MBA Program
bbarraza@weber.edu
Office: +1 (801) 626-7965
Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae

My expertise is split between software development, business management, and education. As a programmer, I have been focused on full-stack, full-lifecycle enterprise software development. Personally, my applications have facilitated nearly $100M in financial transactions, billions of network transactions, and are the foundation for a high-availability, mission-critical application ecosystem. 

As a manager, I am focused on mentoring programmers, developers, designers, business analysts, and strategists within all tiers of the organization. Currently our team portfolio provides direct oversight or advisory oversight to more than 200 disparate applications servicing the full breadth of the campus community facilitating approximately a million sessions a month. Our key in-house developed products are our content management system that hosts 12,000 pages managed by over 600 users, and the eWeber portal that connects the campus community to all of the online offerings at WSU.

As an adjunct faculty member in our ranked business school's MBA program, it has been my privilege to teach and associate with talented professionals from a variety of backgrounds. My passion is to bring high impact pedagogies into the classroom that facilitate career transitions and real-world experience for the engaged learners.

As a researcher, my principle area of investigation is the strategic management of innovation and technology. Currently I am exploring the intersection of Blockchain and platform markets. Principle questions are related to how managerial decision making impacts the co-evolution of the technology and the ecosystem; ultimately looking at strategic decision making within the firm.

Education

Professional Positions

  • Senior Manager, Application Development; Weber State University (2017 - Present)
  • Senior Architect, Application Development; Weber State University (2012-2017)
  • Adjunct Faculty, John B. Goddard School of Business & Economics, MBA Program (2012 - Present)
  • Web Systems Architect, Application Development; Weber State University (2006-2012)
  • Web Developer II, Application Development; Weber State University (2003-2006)
  • Web Developer, Application Development; Weber State University (1999-2003)

Research

Interests

Platform innovation (multi-sided markets, multi-sided platforms), Innovation Management, Strategy under uncertainty, Blockchain, Economic inequality, Economics of entrepreneurship and innovation, Productivity, Strategic innovation, Entrepreneurship and ideation, Technology development

Publications and Refereed Conference Proceedings

Refereed and Peer Reviewed Publications

Refereed and Invited Presentations

  • Barraza, B. (2025). The Entrepreneurial Language and Strategic Patterns of Initial Coin Offerings. 16th Digital Sourcing, Platforms, and Ecosystems Workshop, Obergurgl, Austria.
  • Discussant. “Common European Data Spaces in Health Care: A privacy preserving ecosystem for cancer research.” 16th Digital Sourcing, Platforms, and Ecosystems Workshop, Obergurgl, Austria. 2025.
  • Barraza, B. (2025). Leading for Impact. WSU Hispanic Heritage Month, Ogden, UT. 
  • Barraza, B., Ravindran, K., & Arenas, A. (2024). The Entrepreneurial Language and Outcomes of Initial Coin Offerings. ECIS 2024 TREOS. https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_ecis2024/76
  • Barraza, B., Ravindran, K., & Arenas, A. (2023). Gold Rushes and Bandwagons: Blockchain’s Markets and Developers. AMCIS 2023 Proceedings. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2023/conf_theme/conf_theme/21
  • Barraza, B., Ravindran, K., & Arenas, A. (2023). Initial Coin Offerings. ICIS 2023 TREOS. https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_icis2023/122
  • Barraza, B. (2023). Doctoral Consortium. Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems/Middle Eastern and North African Conference on Information Systems. Madrid, Spain.
  • Barraza, B. (2023). CTO Doctoral Consortium. Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Boston, MA.
  • Barraza, B., Ravindran, K., & Arenas, A. (2022). Blockchain’s Developers During the Pandemic: Inflows and Price Sensitivity. Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Paper Development Workshop. Seattle, WA.
  • Barraza, B. (2022). Gold Rushes and Bandwagons: Blockchain’s Markets and Developers. SCECR, Madrid, Spain.
  • Barraza, B., Ravindran, K., & Arenas, A. (2021). A Digital Goldrush’s Implications for Weak Incentive Governance. Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Paper Development Workshop. Virtual.
  • Barraza, B. (2018). Innovation and the ICO: Signaling Technological Differentiators in Blockchain Ecosystems. International Conference on Information Systems 2018 (ICIS); MISQ-E Special Edition Workshop: “Delivering Business Value through Enterprise Blockchain Applications”. San Francisco, United States. 
  • Barraza, B. (2017). Building reciprocity into the business engagement model: An approach to bridging three significant gaps in highly constrained upper division business courses. 2017 Utah Engaged Faculty Retreat. Moab, UT.
  • Barraza, B. (2012). The Future of Mobile Computing: An Ecosystem Approach. Wildcat TechExpo. Ogden, UT

Other Publications

Teaching/Lecture

  • MBA 6160 - Applications of Decision Models. Goddard School of Business and Economics. Decision modeling, analysis, optimization, Big Data management, and Monte Carlo simulation (2013 – Present)
  • MBA – Data Analytics and Business Intelligence. Goddard School of Business and Economics. Course development
  • Upper Division Supply Chain Management – Simulation. Goddard School of Business and Economics. Modeling, optimization, analytics, and Monte Carlo simulation
  • Upper Division Computer Science – Guest lecturer on high impact project management
  • Upper Division Computer Science – UI/UX Seminar. Guest lecturer on enterprise user interface design approaches
  • Upper Division Computer Science – Guest lecturer on high availability web systems

Professional Service

  • Reviewer
    • ICIS 2019 - Present
    • ECIS 2020 - Present
    • AMCIS 2020 - Present
    • AoM (CTO, TIM, STR) 2020 - Present

Fellowships/Invited Positions/Societies

  • Weber State University; Fellow, Community Engaged Learning
  • Academy of Management (CTO, STR, TIM)
  • Association for Information Systems (AIS)
  • INFORMS
  • Academic Faculty Network of the University of Arkansas Blockchain Center of Excellence
  • Phi Kappa Phi honor society
  • Institute for New Economic Thinking, Young Scholars Initiative
    Income Inequality Working Group
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); MITHackMed Grand Hack 2015

Volunteer

  • Board of Trustees, EnableUtah (2012-2015)
    • Chair: Business Development Committee
    • Chair: Executive Training Committee
    • Chair: Presidential Search Committee
    • Member: Finance and Audit Committee
  • CAVI Exploratory Group (2015)
    From MIT’s HackingMedicine 2015, a group formed to explore Computer Assisted Visual Inspection to improve cervical cancer detection rates in resource constrained areas

Platform Expertise and Programming Languages

  • VB.NET
  • C#
  • ASP.NET
  • CSS
  • HTML
  • JavaScript
  • JQuery
  • Windows Server
  • IIS
  • T-SQL
  • XML
  • OOP
  • SOA
  • MS SQL Server
  • NVivo

International Living/Study Abroad

  • Madrid, Spain; Doctoral studies (multiple on-campus intensives) 
  • England, United Kingdom; Program and curriculum evaluation; 
  • Shanghai & Beijing, China; International Field Studies - Operations and Business Development;
  • Se Habla Español