Simon is a professor of marketing in the Faculty of Business & Economics at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of Judge Business School at Cambridge University. He studies how organizations can become more effective by engaging with customers more meaningfully. One strand of his research focuses on how frontline employees interact with customers to create value for the customer, the firm, and themselves. He also studies how firms interact within regional clusters and value systems and how these interactions create conditions for innovation and sustainable performance.

Behind all his research is the idea that by recasting how firms connect with others, whether that is their customers, staff, or other firms, they can improve their performance. His research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, the Academy of Management Review, and Harvard Business Review, among others.

Simon has worked extensively with industry in a research, consulting, and executive education capacity. He has delivered executive education courses for Cambridge University and Duke Corporate Education. He has conducted research projects with a range of organizations including Goldman Sachs, Target, PWC, and Safer Care Victoria. He is an associate editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute.