Business & Entrepreneurship

Students from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis will present their ideas and debate possible outcomes to the European Commission in a mock-parliament in Brussels on Feb. 1. The deputy head of mission from the Croatian ambassador to the EU will give introductory remarks at the mock-parliament. Officials from the EU and the City of London will be in attendance as well as professors from the Cass Business School.

WUSTL has received a commitment of $1 million from Robert and Julie Skandalaris to create and support the Skandalaris Center Internship Program. The gift will sustain the internship program for the next 10 years and will enable 20 interns per year to participate in an intensive summer experience.

Discounts are no way to increase business.Price promotions may not be the best way to increase sales of canned tuna — or any other frequently purchased consumer good. Managers can become overly focused on losing market share and get caught up in a mindless cycle of discounting — without regard to the long-term implications of their actions, according to marketing professors at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reversing the longstanding case law would give undue windfall to opportunistic third parties, says Kieff.The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing Quanta v. LG, a case that could determine the future direction of patent law. “This case is key to ensuring that patent law develops in a way that best promotes innovation and competition,” says F. Scott Kieff, J.D., professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Kieff and colleagues have filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in support of LG, arguing that under contract law the patent holder had a right to sue a downstream purchaser. Kieff will be closely following this case and is available for comment.

As the number of foreclosures on homes purchased with a subprime mortgage continues to grow, the chatter from Washington and big business is focused on a way to slow, or even reverse, the trend. However, bailing out the industry isn’t necessarily the way to go, according to a finance professor at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Helium is drifting away.In America, helium is running out of gas. The element that lifts things like balloons, spirits and voice ranges is being depleted so rapidly in the world’s largest reserve, outside of Amarillo, Texas, that supplies are expected to be depleted there within the next eight years. This deflates more than the Goodyear blimp and party favors. Its larger impact is on science and technology, according to Lee Sobotka, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University in St. Louis has announced the semi-finalists in the 2008 Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition. This year’s semi-finalists represent a range of proposals including of a group of college students with a plan to provide counseling and mentoring services for low-income students, to an established nonprofit with a proposal for a mixed-use small business incubator.

Coffee shop encounters could lead to new business ideas.Clustering similar firms in a relatively small geographic area is a common economic development tactic. Research from a business professor at Washington University in St. Louis shows the strategy is most effective when companies are within 500 meters of each other. After that, the benefits of proximity quickly lose its power.

Werner Ploberger, Ph.D., was installed as the first Thomas H. Eliot Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences on October 30 in Holmes Lounge. Ploberger, who joined Washington University’s Department of Economics last year, is internationally renowned for his contributions to the fields of econometrics and the theory of estimation.

Pratim Biswas has a method that controls the size of the nanoparticles he makes, opening up possibilities for new nanotechnology applications and different techniques.In a world that constantly strives for bigger and bigger things, WUSTL’s Pratim Biswas, Ph.D., the Stifel and Quinette Jens Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, is working to make things smaller and smaller. Biswas conducts research on nanoparticles, which are the building blocks for nanotechnology. For the first time, Biswas has shown that he can independently control the size of the nanoparticles that he makes, keeping their other properties the same. He’s also shown with his technique that the nanoparticles can be made in large quantities in scalable systems, opening up the possibility for more applications and different techniques.