Olin Business School

The first round of Washington University’s Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition is complete and six semi-finalists are now in the running for $120,000 in funding. Also, three additional teams remain to compete for the $5,000 prize awarded to a student who has founded or supported a team. Winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on May 3, 2007.

Entrepreneurs with good business instincts and a sense of social responsibility will take their plans to the people this week at the second annual Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition (SEIC). On Thursday, March 22nd at 6 p.m. sixteen semi-finalists will present their ideas for new social ventures in an “elevator pitch” first to a panel of judges and then to an audience of community members and students. Audience members will then vote on which pitch should win. The event takes place in the Lab Sciences auditorium on Washington University’s Danforth Campus, and is free and open to the public.

Four alumni of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis will receive the Distinguish Alumni Awards on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at the school’s annual dinner at the Ritz-Carlton St. Louis in Clayton. Mahendra Gupta, dean of the business school, will also present the Dean’s Medal at the same dinner.

In dating — as in business — you don’t want to be looking for a date when you’re desperate; you want to find one before you become desperate. Business professors at Washington University in St. Louis have found that how firms manage their research and development (R&D) pipelines could mean the difference between always having products in the works and searching desperately for new goods. More…

Companies maintain a delicate balance when it comes to selling product lines that contain varying degrees of quality. Premium products need to be positioned beyond the claim of “higher quality” alone. A high-end product needs to compare favorably with its direct competitors, but it can’t appear too similar to other items in the firm’s product line. Part of the solution, according to a marketing professor at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis is for firms to use an advertising strategy that contains image-oriented appeals to differentiate its premium products from the rest. More…

Corporate governance has been in the forefront of public debate lately, thanks to such high-profile events as options backdating, the awarding of inflated CEO compensation packages and efforts to augment shareholder empowerment. These larger scandals have implications that reach beyond the boardroom into every aspect of an enterprise. Ultimately, the transgressions take their toll on all of society, according to Stuart Greenbaum, former dean of the business school at Washington University in St. Louis.

A.G. Edwards Inc., the St. Louis-based national investment firm, will establish the A.G. Edwards Visiting Professorship in Entrepreneurship.

Three early stage companies received commitments for funding and mentoring support at the annual Olin Cup Awards Ceremony Feb. 1. The top prize of $50,000 went to medical device company Neurolife. Two other companies received $20,000 in funding: Senetric, a company that developed software to reduce the cost of Radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensor networks; and Smart DNA Solutions, a company that offers affordable genetic testing. The $5,000 student award went to Peter Braxton of Neurolife.

Entrepreneurs are just as sensitive to uncertainty as anyone. In fact, several studies suggest that entrepreneurs are more risk-averse than other people. So why do they risk losing their shirts by starting a business? They have an overdeveloped sense of confidence that that they can beat the odds, according to research from a business professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Over the past 18 months, many trees have given their lives so that articles titled something like, “Is India the next China?” could appear. But, an equally interesting question a professor from Washington University in St. Louis posed is, “Is China the next India?” These two questions offer a lens through which we might glimpse, however darkly, the economic futures of India and China. And by posing these questions side by side, Professor Jim Little said we can see an interesting pattern emerge: as China moves up the technology ladder, the drivers of its growth are becoming more like India’s. At the same time, India increasingly resembles China’s current economy as it develops as a manufacturing base.