Qbs has the convenience qbs run command that simplifies running applications.

For example, entering the following command runs the Qt Creator application:

qbs run --products qtcreator

By default, running an application also builds it and installs it to a location from where it can be run on the desktop or on a device. Also, this command sets up the environment so that the application can find dependent libraries.

This is not the case when running the binary manually - you'll have to make sure that the app will find its dependencies and/or is relocatable. You can achieve that by configuring rpaths properly or setting the appropriate environment variable for the respective host system.