Business & Entrepreneurship

Dennis Zhang, assistant professor of operations and manufacturing management at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the 2020 Olin Award for research that creates a human-focused algorithm to improve warehouse workers’ packing time while also reducing material costs.

The Mastercard Impact Fund recently awarded the  Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University in St. Louis a three-year, $1.5 million grant. Mastercard’s founding partnership of the SPI will further strengthen the institute’s ability to use research and data science to impact social policy and to promote inclusive growth in the St. Louis community and beyond.

Leadership, at its core, is about influence. In Olin Business School’s popular MBA elective “Power and Politics,” students learn how to navigate leadership positions, which necessitates building power and gaining influence in the workplace.

Two WashU alums and one current student helped take a cosmetics startup from a dream to a reality.

Panos Kouvelis, who teaches and helped to popularize the Waffle House Index regarding natural-disaster responses, says the outbreak’s impact on global supply chains promises to be two times worse than when the SARS virus emerged in 2002 in China.

Training, and retaining, tech talent is essential to St. Louis’ continued economic growth. A new partnership between Washington University in St. Louis and the nonprofit organization LaunchCode makes the transition from apprentice to full-time employee at the university easier for LaunchCode graduates.

A new fellowship for Washington University undergraduates further deepens the university’s commitment to educating and preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs. The program, offered by the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship, will directly connect students to, and immerse them in, the St. Louis startup scene.

A new study that included a pair of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School, Kurt Dirks and Andrew Knight, explored what underlies an accurate sense of trust in a business organization.

While closely held ownership isn’t necessarily bad, research co-authored by a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School suggests some African firms may miss 21st century growth opportunities without the ability to raise capital through shared ownership.

Alumnus and tech giant David Karandish, BSCS ‘05, knows what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.