Business & Entrepreneurship

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.”

Halloween candy is a treat for many children, but for those forced to work on cocoa farms in west Africa it’s a mean and tortuous trick. Two WUSTL professors call attention to the hidden horrors of cocoa production — the base ingredient in chocolate — in an op-ed piece published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District will hold a special session at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3, in the School of Law’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall.  

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Marion Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law at Washington University In St. Louis, looks at the act’s history and says changes in the American workplace and other factors raise the question of how the NLRA will adapt in the future.

Todd T. Milbourn, PhD, was installed as the Hubert C. and Dorothy R. Moog Professor of finance Sept. 29 in a ceremony at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education and Conference Center. Milbourn, who joined the Olin Business School faculty 10 years ago, is the second to receive this title; the inaugural professorship was held by Nicholas Dopuch, PhD, currently Moog professor emeritus of accounting.

Managers and CEOs: are you ready for your close-up? A new book by Jackson Nickerson, PhD, the Frahm Family Professor of Organization and Strategy at Olin Business School, advocates the use of video for communicating from the corner office to employees throughout a business. Nickerson’s book is published by the Brookings Institution Press and will be the first in a series by Olin professors called Innovations in Leadership.