SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Those annual employee performance reviews can be pretty stressful. But what if instead of being a once-a-year thing with just your boss, they were every day, with everyone you work with? JPMorgan Chase & Co. is revamping the way it evaluates its 240,000 employees, deploying a mobile app that will let colleagues across the organization send and receive instant feedback about each other any time.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – Could activism inspired by International Women's Day, such as State Street Global Advisors' placing a statue of a young girl before the iconic charging bull of Wall Street, actually hamper the push to gain more women on U.S. corporate boards?

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — It was never an easy marriage. Now General Motors and its European operations are officially calling it quits, laying bare their incompatibilities and the difficulties of bridging the cultural divide.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – Can Volkswagen’s recently announced $2 billion spending plan on zero emission and electric vehicles be a tipping point for the U.S. electric car economy? No, says management professor David A. Kirsch at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – How close are the Fortune 500 companies to achieving gender equality on their corporate boards? They've got a long way to go, baby.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – When Jonathan Aberman thinks about Snap Inc.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – When employees break the rules at work, it might not be mischief. It might be monotony.

Each year, the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship hosts Pitch Dingman Competition, an opportunity for University of Maryland student entrepreneurs to pitch their businesses shark tank style to an expert panel of judges to compete for a total of $30,000 in seed funding. Pitch Dingman applications open at the beginning of the academic year, with a short quarterfinals phase in late September. A vetting process from alumni entrepreneur judges leads to a selection of 10 semifinalists. The Pitch Dingman Semifinals on Nov.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week to formally walk away from the Trans Pacific Partnership, in what looked like the final chapter for the 12-nation trade deal. 

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Several world leaders opted out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week. Xi Jinping didn't.