Can redefining our notion of happiness help save the planet? This was the question Ehrman Giustina Professor of Marketing Lynn Kahle posed to an audience of graduate students and faculty members in his recent presentation "The Pursuit of Happiness." While our cultural wisdom suggests that people are happiest when they have lots of big, expensive things, this view isn't accurate, according to well-regarded research. In fact, once people rise above the poverty level, the correlation between wealth and subjective well-being--the feeling of day-to-day satisfaction--is relatively weak.

You've got five dollars in seed money, seven days to brainstorm, and two hours to execute your plan—how do you create value? These are the elements of the $5 Challenge, a core feature in management professor Andrew Nelson's course Recognizing Business Opportunities. Four MBA candidates from the Center for Sustainable Business Practices tackled the challenge by creating a service that would be valued by bike commuters everywhere.

The Lundquist College of Business is pleased to announce the Business Innovation Institute, the new umbrella organization for the Center for Sustainable Business Practices and the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship.

Just a few weeks into the winter term, and already so much has happened--and there's plenty more to look forward to. Here's just a sampling:

This January, second-year MBA students affiliated with the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center spent three fast-paced days in New York City meeting with high-level executives at some of the most influential companies and organizations in the world of sports. The annual event marks the final trip the cohort will take together as a group, and it is one that is recalled with enthusiasm by many alums. This year's roster included an insider's view of ESPN (led by two program alums); a session at sports and entertainment powerhouse IMG; and a visit to the headquarters of Bloomberg Sports.

Planning to hit the slopes this winter? Check out SnowSense, an iPhone and iPad app recently launched by Joe Wright--a first-year MBA candidate affiliated with the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship--and his partner Max Lansing, a software developer with a background in geography. Because SnowSense's updates are based on a unique algorithm of real-time data on weather, snow quantity, and snow quality, users see not just how much snow there is currently and how much is expected, but whether the snow is wet, dry, and so forth.

"Whoosh-kerthomp!" That was the sound of bags of bread being tossed to participants in a question-and-answer session with the Entrepreneurship Club's first guest speaker of the winter term. "I like to bribe people to ask questions," explained Dave Dahl, the CEO of--and creative force behind--Dave's Killer Bread, the explosively successful Portland-based bread company.

On January 19, Lundquist College of Business academic advisor Tayah Butler received campus-wide recognition for her groundbreaking work promoting diversity. She was one of five UO employees honored with a 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. Butler--who is also a driving force behind the Diversity in the Workplace Symposium scheduled for this March--launched the Building Business Leaders project in September 2010.