Business & Entrepreneurship

African-American entrepreneur Earl G. “Butch” Graves, Jr. will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 5th in Graham Chapel. The lecture, titled “The Media History and Portrayal of Black America,” is free and open to the public. Graves is the chief operating officer and president of the Earl G. Graves Publishing Company, publisher of Black Enterprise magazine.

Below is a link to the Washington University news release about the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings for 2004-05: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/3627.html To view a full listing of U.S. News magazine, book and Web-only rankings for 2004-05, please visit the U.S. News & World Report site: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php

He joined the magazine in 1988 as the vice president of advertising and marketing and has worked to transform the company into a multimedia conglomerate.

Thursday, March 30 at 5 p.m., the finalists will be selected and announced for the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition, co-sponsored by Washington University and the YouthBridge Association. The event features Theresa Wilson, founder of The Blessing Basket, as a keynote speaker. Currently there are 14 semi-finalists. The finalists will be selected based on their two-minute presentations about their projects. The event takes place in May Auditorium in Simon Hall on the Washington University Hilltop Campus

BigelowLyda Bigelow, assistant professor of organization and strategy, has little sympathy for the difficulties American car makers are experiencing. She says that American car makers had a long time to work out the pension and benefits problems they’re now facing, but the companies failed to do so, even when they had the resources to do so.

Thursday, March 30 at 5 p.m., the finalists will be announced for the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition, co-sponsored by Washington University and the YouthBridge Association. The event features Theresa Wilson, founder of The Blessing Basket, as a keynote speaker. Currently there are 14 semi-finalists. The finalists will be selected based on their two-minute presenations about their projects. The event takes place in May Auditorium in Simon Hall on the Washington University Hilltop Campus.

The Bush administration’s plan to push through health savings accounts is limited in how much it can lower healthcare costs, according to a business professor in the Olin School of Business at Washington University. He says that health savings accounts could work for some things – if the relationship between most doctors and patients changes, and if there were greater acceptance of the variety of ways to keep people healthy. More…

What is a ‘fair’ price for fairness? New research from Washington University’s Olin School of Business reveals that a just system of governance may not enhance trust when returns do not meet investors’ expectations. This is sobering news for businesses that have spent countless hours and large amounts of money complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in the hopes of building stronger corporate governance. More…

Biotech innovations pop up every day. From medicines developed by large companies to ingenious solutions worked out by individuals in university labs, new technologies are poised to enter the marketplace. The question is, are patents helping or hurting this process? “Patents are essential to bring biotechnology innovations from everyone — not just well-funded corporations — to the people,” says F. Scott Kieff, J.D., associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Without patents, the biotech marketplace in basic science takes on the nature of something like an old boys’ club in which personal attributes such as fame, prestige, and even gender and race, govern what exchanges take place; and the addition of patents gives many more people a way to play in that game.”

Businesses today are turning to quantifiable analysis to map strategies. According to a professor at the Olin School of Business, companies can address specific problems in a scientific way by using basic principals of game theory.