Tag: competition

The Skandalaris Center invites you to the final presentations, judging, and reception for the first-ever Boeing Patent Challenge to be held  Thursday, December 3 at 5:30 pm in Emerson Auditorium. Awards ceremony and reception to follow immediately in Frick Forum. RSVP here.

Six interdisciplinary student teams will be showcasing the intellectual property they translated, commercialized, and illustrated for the competition. There will be an opportunity for the audience to vote on their favorite team and the crowd favorite will win $500!

Here are the top 6 teams and their ideas:
A-Team: Horus redirects Boeing’s satellite Hyperspectral Imaging technology (“HSI”) inward to visualize previously unseen cancer biomarkers in real time to reduce cost, risk, and complications associated with cancer diagnostics.

[m]brace: [m]brace is an adhesive tracking device that reports real time information about people’s alcohol intake levels.

Nano Syntech: Nano Syntech produces self-sustaining power within wearable technology through proprietary material systems designed to continuously and autonomously charge wearable devices and reduce charging frequency.

OASIS: Oasis is a software middleware firm specializing in virtual reality (VR) eye tracking technology that helps the end user by preventing nausea, especially in long term use, via personalized image projections and benefits the VR device maker by accumulating user attention data for potential marketing applications.

PerfecTemp: PerfecTemp develops and produces a high-end modular insulation—primarily for use in clothing—that dynamically adjusts thermal properties to provide maximum comfort to the user over a broad range of ambient temperatures.

VLMVM: StentIT allows for effective and rapid internal monitoring of stents’ structural integrity without costly imaging modalities.

The St. Louis Business Journal is sponsoring a competition for women entrepreneurs in conjunction with its annual Women’s Conference. The deadline to enter the Catapult Competition is Oct. 9, 2015, by 5:00 p.m. Entries must be in the form of a 60 second video explaining what you want to change and why you should be catapulted to success.

Link here for entry information.

A local panel will be assembled to review and select four finalists to present at the St. Louis Business Journal Women’s Conference January 29, 2016. Each finalist will receive four months of professional coaching to prepare her business plan and refine her presentation. You may follow all four finalists and their respective coaches online and in print until the day of the Conference.

Each finalist and her coach will pitch to more than 1,000 women at the Conference who will vote to help decide the Catapult Competition winner. The winner will receive a $10,000 package of technology services from MasterCard to catapult her to success! For questions, please contact LaTonja Thomas at ltthomas@bizjournals.com or 314.421.8328.

Image: wikimedia

Learn about “The Million Dollar Rise Prize for Innovation” from S. P. Shukla, President of Group Strategy, Defense Sector for Mahindra, India, March 11, 4:30 p.m. in Brauer Hall, Room 12.  Mahindra is a multi-national company focused on innovation and growth in a diverse array of industries.

The competition focuses on two specific challenges:

• the creation of a ‘Driverless Car for Indian Conditions’
• an ‘Affordable, DIY Solar Kit.’

More information about the awards can be found here. Watch video about the Rise Prize by clicking on image above.

BetaVersity and Champio, startups founded by current Wash U students have been named  finalists in the Student Startup Madness (SSM), a nationwide tournament-style competition for college student digital media ventures. The competition culminates with the “Entrepreneurial Eight” national finals at South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive on Monday, March 16th.

The eight finalists, including Wash U’s Blake Marggraff and Jolijt Tamanaha, will pitch before a judging panel of successful entrepreneurs and investors from Google, Samsung, Dell and a Silicon Valley venture capital firm—all of whom can help the students transform their ideas into business success.

Marggraff and Tamanaha launched previous ventures after taking Olin’s Hatchery course.

The SSM event will be held at SXSW’s Startup Village main venue in the downtown Hilton Austin. The winning team will take home a prize package of software and services (valued at more than $2,000) and bragging rights as the best student startup in America.

Student Startup Madness (SSM) is the only nationwide collegiate tournament focused on digital media startups. It affords college student startups the opportunity to compete against fellow student entrepreneurs, grab the attention of potential investors and supporters, and build an elite professional network.

The 2014-15 SSM Entrepreneurial Eight Finalists (in alphabetical order)

• BetaVersity from Washington University in St. Louis: The company offers BetaBox, a maker lab in a shipping container, as well as Atlas, a job-matching tool targeted at engineers, for 25+ university and corporate clients. [Contact Blake Marggraff, blake@betaversity.com, or visit www.betaversity.com.]
• Boldr from University of Michigan
• Champio from Washington University in St. Louis: An enterprise system that helps companies market better on social media by generating relevant and unique content from employees, which increases follower engagement. [Contact Jolijt Tamanaha, jolijt@champio.com, or visit champio.com.]
• Loco Labs from Bucknell University
• Reliefwatch from University of Chicago
• Spray N’ Pray Studios from Georgia State University
• Tech Twurl from Michigan State University
• Yorango from Cornell University

See SSM press release here.

Leaders in the financial industry appreciated Professor Xiumin Martin’s presentation of her paper Internal Information Asymmetry, Internal Capital Markets, and Firm Value at the December 9, 2014 Praxis luncheon.  A lively Q&A session ensued.

Bloomberg Businessweek ranks Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis #4 in Intellectual Capital (the volume of faculty research published in top business journals), among the best business schools in the country.

“Praxis” is the application of theory or ideas, and it’s the name of our annual publication that features faculty research that is relevant to business managers today. Research put into practice is at the heart of the collaborative relationship between Olin Business School and our Corporate Partners. Let’s work together to make business better.

Read Olin Praxis here and watch this video of Prof. Martin talking about her research on information asymmetry.

Contact Dorothy Kittner for more information at kittner@wustl.edu or 314-935-6365.

This past weekend a team of four students from the Olin Business School set out on a mission to participate in the Tepper International Case Competition at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. We had a daunting task ahead of us – to give it our best shot. In the week leading up to the case competition everything was a fuzz, sessions to discuss strategy, exchanging ideas, poking holes in each others theories, and for the most part a lot of fun.

To say it was a fantastic experience to work with a great team of brilliant people would be a cliche, of course, but I am saying it anyway. When you pull people with varied backgrounds in the same room you can expect one thing for sure – ideas. There are moments of intense discussion, friendly banter, and more importantly a desire to give it all you have. So after spending hours brainstorming and arriving at the solution we were ready to head to Pittsburgh and take on the case competition. As my father says, when you travel under high stress there is bound to be something that one misses.

I left home at 4:30 am to pick up the team and drive to the airport for a 6:25 am flight to the ‘burgh. At the last pick up, I had this sinking feeling, like I was missing something, something crucial to this trip. What was it?  As my last team mate was loading I asked him if he had seen my suitcase in the trunk. My nightmare was coming true – I had forgotten my suitcase ! It was outside my apartment door, long-story-short, we made it to the airport with enough time to have breakfast and get to Pittsburgh well in time.

Competition brings out the best in people and this was no exception. The competition was filled with the usual combination of things – stress, last minute edits, jitters and a desire to excel. We gave it our best shot – we didn’t place. I could say the journey of solving the case, reaching a consensus and finally learning from the other teams was the best part of this experience. I will be honest, there is nothing like seeing the team win! Of course, there will be opportunities to accomplish that in the future.

An integral part of the case competition was my allegiance to Pittsburgh, I did attend school at the University of Pittsburgh in my previous life. The city is filled with jewels from the two main universities and makes for a great opportunity to walk around, take in the history that is evident on both campuses.

The competition and my visit to Pittsburgh was definitely a reminder of all those dreams you concoct when you are younger. It was an opportunity to rediscover these dreams, face the fear of having to answer questions, pitch you idea and walk away with your head held high. I did just that, this time along with my suitcase.

For every time you walk away and do something off the beaten track, you will end up postponing some important homework. I just learnt that this is called the student syndrome and it will most definitely be a critical factor in the recovery process post- competition. Interestingly, our team was comprised of four different types of people – one was happily snoring while we waited for results, one socialized and networked, one was using cellphone apps as a distraction, and another was simply catching up on some homework for the week ahead. However, we had one thing in common – we had a great time!

Each experience ends with lessons learned, in this case:

1. Do not forget your suitcase

2. The homework you have put off till the end will be waiting

So pack up your fears (and your suitcase) and throw your name in the hat for a case competition in spring. Maybe you will find your dreams along the way.

Image: Pittsburgh skyline, Tepper, Carnegie Mellon website

Editor’s note: Olin’s team won the Tepper Case Competition in 2013.