SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Appian Corp., a Reston, Va.-based maker of customized software for companies, made the news recently with the revelation that that it had reached enviable "unicorn" status. Based on private-equity valuatio

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Clinical professor of finance David Kass at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder and a close follower of Warren Buffett’s investment strategy since 1980.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — It's college decision time for many high school seniors. But the process that students and their families use to choose where they'll enroll is far from optimal.

The Do Good Challenge is an eight-week challenge created by University of Maryland students to encourage each other to create ventures that have a positive social impact, with $20,000 in prize money on the line to fund the best ideas.

The Center for Leadership, Innovation, and Change (CLIC) at the Robert H.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Amazon has announced it is leasing 20 Boeing 767 planes in order to move its own goods, a move that could significantly impact FedEx and UPS, which it now leans on to deliver many of its packages. Some analysts are even wondering if Jeff Bezos's company might be positioning itself to become a competitor to FedEx and UPS.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Central bankers in Japan and the Europe Union are at their wits' end in trying to figure how to generate demand and stave off deflation. Both banks have dropped interest rates into negative territory, encouraging spending by making saving literally costly. Yet the publics of the two economic regions have reacted differently. Each is unhappy for a different reason.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — In a recent ABA Banking Journal piece, professor Clifford Rossi at the University of Maryland's Robert H.

Are today's colleges going the way of Blockbuster after the rise of Netflix and streaming video? Things might not be quite so dire. But university leaders need to act quickly to take advantage of emerging technologies. In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Henry Lucas talks about disruptive technologies and how they are impacting higher education.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Twitter has a brain-drain problem, which it's fighting it by issuing stock and stock options to employees it wants to retain. Such payments come on top of the stock those employees already own, which has underperformed expectations.