Business & Entrepreneurship

The winners of the 2005 Olin Cup Competition will be announced Thursday, December 1. Six finalists are in the running to receive a total of $70,000 in seed investments. Additionally, a $5,000 grant will be awarded to the best student-owned venture. The Olin Cup Competition is an annual business formation contest organized by The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Financial Times has ranked the professors at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis tenth in the world in terms of research productivity. The tenth-place designation was announced as part of the Financial Times‘ Executive-MBA rankings in October of 2005.

The Olin School of Business’ non-degree executive education programs ranked tops globally in a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a branch of The Economist Group which also publishes the Economist magazine. Olin’s open programs tied for second place internationally (first-place tie nationally) and its customized programs tied for first place among similar programs worldwide.

Allison Miller discusses jocotes with a man in southern Honduras.Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis report that farmers and families in Central America have saved genetic variation in the jocote (ho-CO-tay), (Spondias purpurea), a small tree that bears fruit similar to a tiny mango. And they’ve done this by taking the plants out of the forest, their wild habitat, and growing them close to home for family and local consumption Allison Miller, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, and former graduate student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, and Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology Barbara Schaal, Ph.D., from Washington University, in conjunction with Peter Raven, Ph.D. Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, have shown multiple domestications of the jocote in Central America in the midst of large-scale deforestation, a practice that endangers genetic diversity .

Storing hydrogen is problematic. A WUSTL chemist and his colleagues are exploring different approaches to help make hydrogen fuel more practical.A chemist at Washington University in St. Louis hopes to find the right stuff to put the element hydrogen in a sticky situation. Lev Gelb is exploring several different ways to store hydrogen and prepares theoretical models of molecules that could enable storage and transport of hydrogen gas. One process would involve materials that hydrogen would stick to.

Tales of corporate scandal and political misdeeds have made spectacular headlines in recent years — just the mention of Enron or Bill Clinton conjure up memories of those offenses. But on a day-to-day basis most people don’t deal with such large-scale scandals. Instead, they are confronted with relatively innocuous mistakes — the kinds of mistakes that eventually break down trust and possibly even derail a career. There’s a reason that a simple apology doesn’t always re-establish the trust that colleagues once enjoyed, according to new work by Kurt Dirks, associate professor of organizational behavior at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. People’s reactions to apologies vary widely depending on the nature of the transgression.

Joe Angeles/WUSTL PhotoCorporations enjoy cross-curricular classes at the Olin School of Business’ Knight Center for Executive Education.The debate over the relevance and future prospects of business schools is not new. The same issues have existed since the beginning of formal business education in the late 1800s. The current state of the debate, fueled by declining MBA applications and high profile legal cases involving MBA-trained executives, has proceeded in ignorance of this history, according to Bill Bottom, the Joyce and Howard Wood Distinguished Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Challenges to Public Education Financing Facing Missouri and the Nation” is the topic of a one-day public forum to be held Nov. 4. Co-sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the event features discussions by nationally recognized academic experts, state legislators and school superintendents. Free and open to the public; reservations required.

Nobel Laureate Kenneth J. Arrow will discuss “The Economics of New Antimalarial Drugs” at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 21 in the Bryan Cave Courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Hall. Arrow, a longtime professor of economics at Stanford University, recently chaired a National Institute of Medicine committee that issued a report titled “Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance.” Malaria, along with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, is one of the big three global killers of the world’s poorest people.

Six entrepreneurial projects have made it to the final round of the Olin Cup Competition. The finalists were selected from a group of 11 semi-finalists Thursday evening at a networking event at Washington University. Teams are competing for a total of $70,000 in seed investments — awarded to those who create viable business ventures with a high probability of success. In addition to the $70k, a $5k grant will be awarded to the best student-owned venture — bringing the total prize money to $75,000.