Creating a Company Is a Different Act Than Collecting and Optimizing the Pieces

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At flagship, you have a string of successes of, what, over forty companies that you have helped to create. How is creating a company as a co creator a different skill than being either a v c who picks winners or doing all the work yourself in building the company? Well i should say that flagship is itself an experiment in a new breed of company, conceives and creates and launches and develops companies. So a company that develops companies is not a traditional way one fathoms what a company does. Our products are effectively platforms that are embodied within companies.

“The world of innovation is very much one of toggling between survival and then thriving,” says Noubar Afeyan. Co-founder of Moderna and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the biomedical innovator, philanthropist, and entrepreneur credits his successes to his “paranoid optimism” shaped by his experiences as an Armenian-American. Exceptional achievements like the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine, he believes, aren’t usually unpredictable but rather the result of systematic processes that include embracing unreasonable propositions and even unreasonable people.

He joined Tyler to discuss which aspect of entrepreneurship is hardest to teach, his predictions on the future of gene editing and CRISPR technology, why the pharmaceutical field can’t be winner takes all, why “basic research” is a poor term, the secret to Boston’s culture of innovation, the potential of plant biotech, why Montreal is (still) a special place to him, how his classical pianist mother influenced his musical tastes, his discussion-based approach to ethical dilemmas, how thinking future-backward shapes his approach to business and philanthropy, the blessing and curse of Lebanese optimism, the importance of creating a culture where people can say things that are wrong, what we can all learn by being an American by choice, and more.

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Recorded January 6th, 2021 Other ways to connect

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