Business & Entrepreneurship

The field in the 2010 Olin Cup business plan competition was narrowed Nov. 18 as 21 semifinalists faced off in the elevator pitch stage of the race for entrepreneurs at Washington University in St. Louis. Six ventures were selected to advance to the final round of the annual contest that will award $75,000 to the most promising enterprise in February 2011.

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law’s Trial Team swept the inaugural Missouri Attorney General’s Cup Trial Competition held in Jefferson City, Mo., Nov. 12-14, taking first and second place in the championship round.

Before Google became a household word, engineers like Anna Patterson (EN ’87, EN ’87) were figuring out how to search the Internet and find the most relevant answers to random queries. The director of Google Research returns to campus at 8 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, as guest speaker co-sponsored by Olin Business School and the School of Engineering & Applied Science. She will talk about her experience in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and member of the Google team.

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law will host a screening of the award-winning documentary Family Affair at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall.

Students in various disciplines throughout universities receive hands-on training through service-learning programs such as law school clinics. But that type of academic training is under attack from both big business and legislative bodies, say two professors from the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “Recent legislative and corporate efforts to interfere in the operations of law clinics indicate that academic freedom is at risk when hands-on student learning bumps up against ‘real-world’ disputes,” write Robert Kuehn, JD, and Peter Joy, JD, in “‘Kneecapping’ Academic Freedom,” the recent lead article for “The Conflicted University,” a special edition of Academe, the publication of the American Association of University Professors. 

Events to spark innovation, imagination and creativity are taking place on the WUSTL campus and around the world from Nov. 15-20 as part of a global initiative to promote entrepreneurship among young people. Got an idea? Learn how to turn it into a venture. Participate in an amazing race to discover innovative ventures in St. Louis or listen to other entrepreneurs as they bounce their ideas off a panel of judges.

Standard and Poor’s recently released study on “Global Aging 2010: An Irreversible Truth” calls for the raising of the retirement age and says that age-related public spending is “unsustainable without policy change.” But Merton Bernstein, LLB, the Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis, says raising the retirement age could be a costly mistake.

The continuing debate over same-sex marriage has put the issue of gender at the forefront of conversations about whom the law recognizes as a child’s parents. “The shift in family law’s treatment of gender has been transformative,” says Susan Appleton, JD, family law expert and the Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Entrepreneurs armed with phone apps, robots and internet-based tools for teaching and organizing are among the semi-finalists in this year’s Olin Cup business plan competition.  Tattoos that fade away after a few months, composting systems and a family-oriented weight loss program are among the innovative ideas vying for investors and prize money. 

Charles W. Burson, JD, senior professor of practice at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, says that the midterm elections reflect a dramatic turn from the wave of aspiration that defined our politics in 2008 to the wave of grievance that defines these midterm elections. “The Tea Party movement is the embodiment of that phenomenon. In Missouri, this wave has put the seats of Democratic Congressmen Ike Skelton and Russ Carnahan at risk, but the same wave may have also put at risk the seat of Republican Representative Jo Ann Emerson.”