Erik focuses on innovation, data science, digital tranformation, and management and negotiations in new ventures.

In addition to the academic research, Erik is also co-founder of Flowminder, a non-profit initiative started together with academics at Karolinska Institute and University of Southampton engaged in applied data science using mobile and satellite data to achieve radical improvements in disaster response and development. In 2016, Flowminder joined Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and MIT Media Lab to become a core member of the DataPop Alliance.  

Through this work, he has been involved in the development and management of applied data science and analytics projects with major mobile operators and UN agencies in e.g. Bangladesh, Nepal, and additional projects underway in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

From 2009-2017 Erik was first advising and later leading SSE Business Lab, the school´s business incubator/accelerator that has helped start and grow more than 100 companies started by SSE students and alumni. SSE Business Lab alumni companies have over 2,500 staff and in excess of MEUR 400 in aggregated turnover ytd.

He has been a visiting professor at ESSEC Business School in Paris, and also at SciencesPo/Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) where he helped initiate and launch the SSE-SciencesPo Double Degree Framework. During 2007-2011 he was affiliated with the Swedish National Defense College for work on best practices and international method development for data collection and analytics in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS).