Biography
Erik Simanis is a visiting professor in the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell University, where he teaches SYSEN 5213, “Designing Robust Ventures Using Profitability as an Engineering Requirement.” He received his Ph.D. in strategy from Cornell’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, where his dissertation, The Anatomy of Market Creation, laid the foundation for a systems-based methodology he has spent over two decades developing and applying.
Simanis is the founder of Half-Solved, LLC, where he continues to advance and systematize integrative venture engineering (IVE), a systems-based methodology for designing new ventures that are financially robust at launch. IVE’s analytical and simulation tools have been adapted by the International Finance Corporation to evaluate early-stage renewable energy ventures, and Simanis is now digitizing the methodology into FIT Startup, a self-service web application, built using AI-assisted development tools, that scaffolds users through IVE’s first-principles thinking, analysis, and modeling and simulation techniques. Prior to founding Half-Solved, he co-founded and served as Chief Venture Architect of TIL Ventures, growing the firm into a 15-person team that led more than two dozen new-market creation efforts for Fortune 500 clients including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Mars, Barclays, Disney, BMW, Pearson, and Dupont, spanning categories from personal care, sanitation, and nutrition to banking, mobility, and education.
His work has also shaped how leading institutions evaluate early-stage ventures for investment. He has led due diligence on behalf of the Shell Foundation, the UN Clean Cookstove Alliance, the International Finance Corporation, and the World Bank, and has served as an investment advisor to the UK Department for International Development and as an evaluator for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s corporate food and nutrition program. Earlier in his career, Simanis directed Cornell’s Market Creation Strategies Program and co-directed the Base of the Pyramid Protocol, securing a $500,000 joint grant from the Gates Foundation and the SC Johnson Fund to codify a repeatable methodology for building profitable ventures in underserved markets.
His research and practitioner writing have appeared in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. He holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and a BA in Spanish from Wake Forest University.