About the MCL – Market Creators Lab

The MCL convenes innovators, investors and researchers to advance the science and discipline of market creation

MCL members tackle real-world market creation challenges and questions, engaging with live Venture Building, participating in Collaborative Research and the development of new tools and practices, and benefiting from Knowledge Sharing within the MCL.

Venture Building

The MCL is home to Entrepreneurs-in-Residence who design, prototype, and build market-creating ventures. They share their experiences with the MCL community, refining IVE tools and practices through real-world experimentation. Each venture also serves as a lighthouse example for future market creation attempts—illuminating the path for others to follow.

Collaborative Research

The MCL is built around member-driven working groups that focus on particular market creation challenges, such as a new and emerging technology, an industry sector or societal challenge, or a competency. Each working group houses research initiatives, where tools, techniques, and frameworks are produced to advance the discipline of IVE, with the support of graduate student fellows and Entrepreneurs-in-Residence.

Knowledge Sharing

The MCL hosts webinars, conferences, and bespoke training events for individuals and groups interested in learning more about the science of market creation. MCL working groups also regularly release reports, tools, case-studies, and INCOSE technical publications for fellow market creators to use and learn from.

MCL Team

The MCL’s team of market creation experts are trusted by the world’s largest institutions:

Erik Simanis

Managing Director
Director, IVE Program at Cornell & Half-Solved Founder

Working at the intersection of market creation and research, Erik has guided over forty new corporate ventures and startups, ranging from financial services to FMCG. Through this work, Erik founded and led the development of Integrative Venture Engineering, a novel market creation discipline that reduces the time, risk and cost to build a profitable new market venture. He holds a PhD in Strategy from Cornell, and has been published in leading journals including Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review.

Patrick Donohue

Managing Director
Half-solved CEO

Patrick is a seasoned innovation leader with 20+ years of experience in product, business and engineering roles at Facebook, Automattic, Rockwell, Apple and in leading numerous market-creation startups and innovation efforts. As a 0-to-1 venture leader, he has created multi-million dollar revenue impact, led corporate innovation and strategy initiatives, and was the co-founder of the Hoop Fund and Head of Product for eParachute. As an advisor and coach, Patrick supports leaders at Dropbox, Faire, Brex et al.