Business & Entrepreneurship

Hundreds of alumni, students, faculty, business leaders, entrepreneurs and friends of the university gathered May 2 and 3 to celebrate a momentous milestone in the 97-year history of Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School – the dedication of Knight Hall and Bauer Hall, the school’s new state-of-the-art buildings.

A group of a two dozen corporate leaders, including Warren Buffet, is trying to influence American companies to increase the number of women in positions of senior leadership. The effort, called the 30% Club, is an expansion of an effort in Great Britain to increase female corporate board representation there to 30 percent by the end of 2015. But can it work in the United States? Maybe, with more defined objectives, says Olin Business School’s Michelle Duguid, PhD, an expert on women in the workplace.

An undergraduate success story: Jolijt Tamanaha spent her last weeks of junior year at Washington University in St. Louis making a deal to sell a startup she co-founded called Farmplicity — an online marketplace that matches restaurants with local farmers — founded in a course through Olin Business School called The Hatchery.

The Brookings Institution and Washington University in St. Louis have announced a new fellowship program aimed at boosting senior-level government employee success. The new Brookings Executive Education Fellowship will help agencies and individuals develop the thinking and behaviors needed for fostering skilled government leadership, while doing so at a significantly reduced cost.

Olin Business School feted four of its top alumni during the 2014 Olin Distinguished Alumni Awards Dinner March 4 at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. The school presented four Distinguished Alumni Awards, the Dean’s Medal and the Olin Award, which recognizes the important impact scholarly research can have on business results.

More than 170 Washington University in St. Louis undergraduates showcased their research projects through poster, visual and oral presentations during the 2014 Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium, held April 28 in Bauer and Knight halls.

Many privacy discussions follow a similar pattern, and involve the same kinds of arguments. It’s commonplace to hear that privacy is dead, people — especially kids — don’t care about privacy, people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, and privacy is bad for business. “These claims are common, but they’re myths,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Retired Lt. Gen. George J. Flynn, who served as deputy commandant for combat development and integration for the U.S. Marine Corps, makes a point during his remarks at a formal Dining-Out event April 17 in the Knight Center. Sponsored by the Olin Veterans Assocation, the Dining-Out event is a formal military tradition for members of a company or other unit aimed at fostering camaraderie.

The number of women and minorities on corporate boards has remained static in the last 10 years, despite an increasing amount of data supporting the argument that board diversity is related to good business outcomes. “Businesses have a significant opportunity to improve performance through increasing the diversity – in many forms – of their board,” said Hillary Sale, JD, corporate governance expert and professor of law and management at Washington University in St. Louis. Sale offers thoughts for both corporations and potential board candidates.

In his new book, “Leading Change from the Middle,” Jackson Nickerson, PhD, the Frahm Family Professor of Organization & Strategy in Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, offers a practical and novel approach for building extraordinary capability without the traditional use of authority.