Background

Kenneth A. Younge, Ph.D.
Economist, data scientist, builder.

Three decades spent on one question from different angles: how organizations turn new technology into real work - as a strategy consultant re-engineering processes in the 1990s, as a serial founder, as a professor researching and teaching innovation, and now as the author of the Axis Workflow.

/ Academia

Appointments: Associate Professor at EPFL (2015-2022), holding the Chair of Technology and Innovation Strategy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he founded and directed the Data Science for Managers executive program - the source of the testimonials on this site; Affiliated Faculty at Stanford Law School's CODEX Center for Legal Informatics (2017-2019); and Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at Purdue University (2013-2015).

Education: postdoc in Technology & Innovation at UC Berkeley; Ph.D. in Strategy & Entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado; M.A. from Stanford University; B.A. with honors, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Brown University.

Teaching: three Best Teacher Awards at EPFL (2017, 2020, 2021), three Distinguished Teacher Awards at Purdue University, and an Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Colorado - seven distinctions across three institutions.

Research: published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Strategic Management Journal, and IEEE-ICMLA, among others - including a Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize and the Academy of Management's Outstanding Dissertation Award. The papers themselves are on the research page.

/ Entrepreneurship

Seven companies founded across three decades - several sold, all instructive.

SimAxis 2026 - present

Agentic process re-engineering - author of the Axis Workflow.

Quant AI 2020 - 2024

Data-science education and consulting - successful exit in 2024.

PatR Foundation 2015 - 2018

Vector-space models for the patent landscape.

TP Health Systems 2005 - 2007

Platform for disease management - successful pilot with Kaiser.

Total Trainer 2002 - 2005

Training software for olympic athletes - successful exit in 2005.

Expert Connection 1994 - 1997

An online marketplace for technical experts - successful exit in 1997.

Ideal Computing 1997 - 2002

IT and web-app development - the golden years of the .com boom.

Mercer Consulting 1992 - 1993

Process re-engineering for IT - where it all started 30 years ago.

/ Off the clock

Hard things, done methodically: Rock climbing at 8a/5.13; big-wall climbing, with ascents of El Capitan; expedition climbing, with ascents in Nepal, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile; long-distance cycling, with trips across Mongolia, Bolivia, and most of Europe; avid skier, with marathons at the Engadin and Transju.

Work with Ken.

See Consulting and Training, or write directly to support@simaxis.ai.