Olin Award: Research That Transforms Business
Established in 2007, the Olin Award recognizes the important impact that scholarly research by WashU Olin faculty can have on business results.
Richard Mahoney, Olin distinguished executive-in-residence and former chairman and CEO of Monsanto, initiated the Olin Award to promote scholarly research with the greatest potential to create meaningful value in the business world. Winners have addressed a variety of business challenges — from organizational behavior to leveraging innovation.
Each year, faculty members submit papers for consideration; they are judged by a group of national business executives and educators.
Winners receive a $25,000 honorarium.
The 2026 Olin Award: Using AI Copilots in Real Estate Sales
Well-designed AI “assistants” embedded in frontline workflows can support employees, improve customer experience, and enhance business outcomes, especially in settings where employees help customers navigate complex, high-stakes decisions.
Xiang Hui, associate professor of marketing, won the 2026 Olin Award for the study, “AI Copilots in Real Estate: Evidence from China,” first drafted in July 2025. His coauthors are Lin William Cong of Nanyang Technological University and Yushan Zhou of Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Read article (via WashU Source)Past Winners of the Olin Award
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2025 Winner
Xiang Hui, assistant professor of marketing, and Oren Reshef, assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, won the 2025 Olin Award for their study, “The Short-Term Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Employment: Evidence from an Online Labor Market,” which was published in the journal Organization Science in September 2024. Their coauthor on the study was Luofeng Zhou of New York University.
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2024 Winner
The winners of the 2024 Olin Award are Nick Argyres, Olin’s Vernon W. & Marion K. Piper Professor of Strategy, and Durai Sundaramoorthi, a professor of practice in data analytics.
Mazzeo praised Argyres’ research for offering valuable insight into how some firms quickly develop future innovations—spawned by their existing innovations. “It turns out a well-connected internal researcher network can hugely benefit a firm. And that has important implications for managers, who can influence researchers’ connectedness.”
The paper, “Internal Network Structure and the Speed of Generative Appropriability,” is under review at Strategic Management Journal. Mazzeo said one judge noted the paper provides “very positive additions to organization strategy and structure considerations.”
Mazzeo praised Sundaramoorthi's paper, “Management of Resource Sharing in Emergency Response Using Data-driven Analytics” for coming up with “a powerful way to address supply shortages in emergency situations”— such as the ventilator shortage in hospitals during the Covid pandemic.
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2023 Winner
The winners of the 2023 Olin Award are the authors of “Nip It in the Bud! Managing the Opioid Crisis: Supply Chain Response to Anomalous Buyer Behavior.” The paper is by Seethu Seetharaman, the W. Patrick McGinnis Professor of Marketing and co-director of the Center for Analytics and Business Insights (CABI); Michael Wall, professor of practice in marketing and entrepreneurship and co-director of CABI; Anthony Sardella, adjunct lecturer and senior research advisor at CABI; and Annie L. Shi, a doctoral student in marketing. The researchers developed a process for flagging suspicious transactions across 100 pharmaceuticals—a process with a stunningly high level of precision and one that can immediately take aim at curbing the country’s opioid epidemic.
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2022 Winners
The winners of the 2022 Olin Award are the authors of “ SPACs and Forward-Looking Disclosure: Hype or Information?” The paper is by Kimball Chapman, assistant professor of accounting; Richard Frankel, Olin’s Beverly & James Hance Professor of Accounting; and Xiumin Martin, professor of accounting. They explored whether SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies) take advantage of an apparent exemption from prosecution under the Securities Act of 1933 to hype forward-looking disclosures to deceive shareholders. SPACs have allowed many companies to raise more funds without evidence that allowing forecasts misleads investors, the research found. And they have propelled innovation in a range of industries, including healthcare, electric vehicles and space exploration.
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2021 Winner
Anne Marie Knott, the Robert and Barbara Frick Professor of Business at Olin, wrote “RQ Innovative Efficiency and Firm Value,” published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. RQ is short for research quotient, which is measured as the output elasticity of research & development (R&D). First developed by Knott in 2008, RQ can be estimated for any firm reporting R&D. Knott’s winning paper explores RQ’s ability to serve as a robust measure of a firm’s innovation for the finance audience. R&D is the primary source of growth for 40% of companies, “yet companies are flying blind with respect to the R&D because they lack good metrics,” Knott says. The front-end implication of flying blind is that companies don’t know how much to invest in R&D. “Only 4% of companies invest within plus 10% of optimal levels. The remaining 96% of companies are leaving an average of $182 million of foregone profits on the table each year.”
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