Tag: Olin in the Media

It’s another far-reaching global sporting scandal: On Nov. 9, the World Anti-Doping Agency recommended the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspend Russia from athletics competition in the wake of its findings regarding that country’s ongoing cover-ups of positive performance-enhancing drug tests in its track and field athletes.

“I don’t claim to be an expert in the various advances in testing methods and procedures. But when you consider the Ben Johnsons and the Marion Joneses of the world, you realize that doping scandals have been part of the recent past with respect to track and field,” said Patrick Rishe, PhD and director of the Olin Business of Sports Program.

The findings were presented in Geneva, Switzerland. For an international sporting scene still reeling from FIFA fallout this summer, it’s another embarrassment that could have ramifications of Olympic proportions: the ruling could keep Russian athletes out of Rio de Janeiro next year.

“What this shows is that when you have these organizations, individuals, or processes which receive little external checks-and-balances, opportunities arise for corruption,” Rishe said. “FIFA has proved this to be true. The world of cycling has suffered from this stigma mightily. So too again will track and field.

“Over the long run, one wonders how this will impact ratings and sponsorship of Olympic Games. Because if the public’s confidence in the legitimacy of the outcomes is frayed, their interest will wane … and with fewer eyeballs, corporations will be less bullish on sponsorship investments,” Rishe said.

By Erika Ebsworth-Goold, WUSTL Newsroom

When Congress passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act in 2012, a proposal for a system of “equity crowdfunding” to back entrepreneurial ventures was included. There was excitement about democratizing investments beyond the virtual monopoly of venture capital funds. It’s been three years, and the Securities and Exchange Commission  just issued 685 pages of crowdfunding rules last week which won’t take effect until after a 90-day comment period and final vote.

Dave Nicklaus takes a look at the new rules in his St. Louis Post-Dispatch column and gets Cliff Holekamp’s read on the issue.

Cliff Holekamp, a partner at Cultivation Capital who teaches an entrepreneurship class at Washington University, advises founders to approach the new rules warily. If you pitch your company later to traditional venture capitalists, he said, they may not want to deal with dozens of $2,000 investors who backed your crowdfunding campaign.

“I’m advising my students and entrepreneurs I work with to stick with the old rules until we learn how the new rules are going to play out,” Holekamp said. “But the more options we can provide for entrepreneurs, the better.”

Holekamp is senior lecturer in entrepreneurship and director of the MBA Entrepreneurship Platform at Olin.

Link to Nicklaus’ column.

Patrick Rishe, director of the Business of Sports program at Olin, calls out the Dallas Cowboys in his Forbes column for failing to acknowledge the behavior – off and on the field -of Greg Hardy.

“Signing players with more-than-questionable character issues, and then designating them as team leaders in remarks to media members, undermines a once-great sports brand, and quite frankly, is just downright poor business.”

Link to column on Forbes.  Greg Hardy And The Dallas Cowboys: A Case Study In Poor Sports Branding 10/27/2015

Financial matters are separate from health, right? Not necessarily. In a 2014 study from Olin researchers Timothy Gubler, PhD ’15 and Lamar Pierce, assoc. professor of strategy, discovered a correlation between physical health and financial health. Specifically, the pair found that employees’ poor physical health is driven by the same psychological factors that determine whether they contribute to a workplace retirement plan. In the study, employees who contributed regularly to their 401(k) were not only more likely to take steps to improve their health, but also had a 27 percent improvement in their blood test scores.

Link to article in Workforce Management
“Today’s Wellness: Sound Body, Mind & Finances”
10/23/15

Link to related news release

Bloomberg Business released its Best Business Schools ranking based on a new survey process and remodeled methodology on October 6. The 2015 rankings place Olin’s Full-Time MBA program at #35 and the Professional MBA program at #14. The rankings last year were #26 and #21, respectively.

Our strengths are indisputable: Olin remains in the top five US schools in the important category of employment results with job placement at #2; and our alumni continue to report positive feedback on the ROI of the MBA degree. The low student ranking based on a survey of the class of 2015 was a key factor in the drop of the overall MBA ranking—a statistic that we will further analyze once more data is made available.

Changes to the 2015 rankings protocol include a survey of students immediately after graduation; additional alumni surveys; the elimination of faculty research output as a measurement; and changes in the percentage each component contributes to the final calculation of the rankings. With these changes, the Bloomberg ranking now incorporates several components similar to the US News & World Report Best Business Schools, which ranked Olin’s MBA program at #19 earlier this year.

Here is a breakdown of the new model for the ranking methodology:

Full-Time MBA Rankings are based on five components:

Part-Time MBA Rankings are based on two surveys:

The 2015 survey reflects the first major change to the Bloomberg Business rankings (formerly BusinessWeek) in more than 25 years. Bloomberg will provide schools with details of the data gathered in the surveys in the weeks ahead. We hope to glean from these results insights and trends that we may use to make our program even stronger in the future.

Link to Bloomberg Business Best Business School ranking.

Seventy companies are headed to Washington University in November for St. Louis’ largest event for early-stage startups: Startup Connection. Over a third of these companies are founded or supported by WashU alumni, faculty and students.

Startup Connection will be held in Olin’s Knight Hall and Bauer Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 18 beginning at 5 p.m. Registration required.

The event gives St. Louis’s top startups the opportunity to present their companies to a packed house of entrepreneurs, investors, and other members of the innovation community. The event combines a startup showcase, resource fair, and is topped off with a fast-paced pitch session. Link to register for Startup Connection

Leading up to the event, WashU’s new Fuse website will be posting some quick video profiles of WashU’s Startup Connection participants. Stay tuned as these companies prepare to pitch their products and ideas to faculty, alums, the business community and venture capitalists.

Watch the first video: DataDog: Using biofeedback to regulate stress

Read more about the startups selected to participate this year.