Noubar Afeyan, cofounder and chair of Moderna Therapeutics and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, says that the breakthrough innovation behind the company’s Covid-19 vaccine came not as a stroke of luck, but from a repeatable process. He outlines a system called “emergent discovery” that involves working back from future ideals, pioneering in novel spaces, encouraging unreasonable ideas, and persistently questioning hypotheses. And he says this process applies to other industries besides life sciences. Afeyan is the coauthor, with HBS professor Gary Pisano, of the HBR article “What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation.”
This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast on September 23, 2021.
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Series Description:
A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.
About Harvard Business Review:
Harvard Business Review is the leading destination for smart management thinking. Through its flagship magazine, books, and digital content and tools published on HBR.org, Harvard Business Review aims to provide professionals around the world with rigorous insights and best practices to help lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact. Learn more at www.hbr.org.
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
1:28 - Incremental vs. Breakthrough Innovation
4:43 - Synthetic mRNA as a Breakthrough Innovation
8:50 - Talent Management for Innovation
11:07 - Obstacles to Great Results
15:36 - Advantages to Being the First
21:14 - Outro
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