Erik Simanis is not your average Ph.D. student.  For one thing, he's done work on his degree at two separate institutions (the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School and Cornell University's Johnson School of Business.)  Furthermore, he's spent more time in the field than in the library – not necessarily good for paper writing, but certainly a benefit as far as the paper's content is concerned.  Finally, Simanis probably knows as much about the Base of the Pyramid space – and how it relates to sustainability – as anyone, including BoP gurus like C.K. Prahalad, Stu Hart and Al Hammond.

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with Erik while I was in Ithaca for the Entrepreneurship@Cornell event.  Sitting in Monica Touesnard's office in the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, Erik and I polished off a couple cups of coffee over the course of two hours.  The outcome of that discussion – a long-form interview – follows.

Rob Katz: How did you get involved in the "base of the pyramid" community?

Erik Simanis: It goes back to the late 1990s, when I was doing my MBA at UNC.  That's when I met Stu Hart.  I had gone back to school to focus on sustainability – he was (and is) a major player in that space.  Interestingly, the late 1990s was when sustainability was still pretty young.  At the time, the draft "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" paper (co-authored by Hart and C.K. Prahalad in 1998) was going around, and I had an interest.  

While I was doing my MBA, I had an internship with Monsanto and, after graduation, I was supposed to work there as a country manager in India for their smallholder farmers business.  Essentially, it was in their BoP/sustainability team.  Of course, Monsanto's stock price took a huge hit between the time I was offered the job and when I was to start, so I had to think differently - quickly.  Specifically, Monsanto was acquired by Pharmacia in the face of the GMO uproar – as part of the merger, they effectively dissolved the "BoP team."  I moved into a consulting position with Paul Gilding's ECOS and continued to work with Stu to launch the BoP Lab.

Meanwhile, I was reaching out to different parts of the school (anthropology, social work) and wanted to see Stu and C.K.’s ideas mature.  What I mean by this is that, in 1999 and 2000, the whole BoP space was just about getting people's attention – 4 billion people!  Trillions of dollars! 

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