Olin Business School

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in a series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars to be held biweekly through April 18 on Washington University’s Danforth Campus. The series begins Monday, Jan. 24, with a lecture by Juan Pantano, PhD, assistant professor of economics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, on “C-Sections and Fertility.”

What do beer industry giant Tsingtao and the midwest’s handcrafted Schlafly brewery have in common? Hops, barley and business school.  Schlafly’s brewmaster and Tsingtao’s president are recent graduates of Olin Business School’s Executive MBA program that provides a unique experience for students to network with peers around the globe and share stories from the executive suite over a glass of beer.

Plan your exit before you enter a new business market may sound like strange advice, but it comes from an expert in entrepreneurship with experience to prove it. Olin professor Clifford Holekamp shares his expertise in the December issue of Octane, the award winning magazine of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization.

Should weather conditions create potentially hazardous travel conditions, Washington University will evaluate the situation and take into consideration the safety of the faculty, staff and students as well as the services that must be provided despite the inclement weather.

Try to imagine an environmentally friendly science lab that reduces, reuses and recycles. That’s the challenge posed by the second annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition at Washington University in St. Louis. Students who devise the best plan for green labs will be seeing green — a $5,000 first prize — when the winners are announced in February.

The field in the 2010 Olin Cup business plan competition was narrowed Nov. 18 as 21 semifinalists faced off in the elevator pitch stage of the race for entrepreneurs at Washington University in St. Louis. Six ventures were selected to advance to the final round of the annual contest that will award $75,000 to the most promising enterprise in February 2011.

Before Google became a household word, engineers like Anna Patterson (EN ’87, EN ’87) were figuring out how to search the Internet and find the most relevant answers to random queries. The director of Google Research returns to campus at 8 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, as guest speaker co-sponsored by Olin Business School and the School of Engineering & Applied Science. She will talk about her experience in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and member of the Google team.

Events to spark innovation, imagination and creativity are taking place on the WUSTL campus and around the world from Nov. 15-20 as part of a global initiative to promote entrepreneurship among young people. Got an idea? Learn how to turn it into a venture. Participate in an amazing race to discover innovative ventures in St. Louis or listen to other entrepreneurs as they bounce their ideas off a panel of judges.

Entrepreneurs armed with phone apps, robots and internet-based tools for teaching and organizing are among the semi-finalists in this year’s Olin Cup business plan competition.  Tattoos that fade away after a few months, composting systems and a family-oriented weight loss program are among the innovative ideas vying for investors and prize money. 

Halloween candy is a treat for many children, but for those forced to work on cocoa farms in west Africa it’s a mean and tortuous trick. Two WUSTL professors call attention to the hidden horrors of cocoa production — the base ingredient in chocolate — in an op-ed piece published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.