HBR IdeaCast Future of Business: Moderna’s Founder on Innovation That Breaks Through
90 snips
Dec 4, 2025 
Noubar Afeyan, an entrepreneurial biochemical engineer and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, shares insights on fostering breakthrough innovation. He distinguishes between continuous and discontinuous innovation, emphasizing the need for different organizational structures to support disruptive ideas. Afeyan discusses the role of AI in idea generation and warns that experts often overlook next-gen innovations. He advocates for open exploration and highlights how anti-science sentiments threaten the regenerative advantages of a nation. His approach is rooted in evolutionary principles for innovation.
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Breakthroughs Are Discontinuous Leaps
- Breakthroughs are discontinuous leaps that are hard to predict and don't connect easily to prior work.
- They apply across industries and differ from continuous adjacency-driven innovation.
Attack Innovation From Two Directions
- Pursue both continuous adjacencies and future-back breakthroughs simultaneously to attack value from two directions.
- Envision future states and work backwards to make those futures possible today.
Separate Teams For Unpredictable Bets
- Create a separate group with different motivation and rewards to pursue truly unpredictable, discontinuous innovation.
- Run multiple approaches and persist long enough to see if options can create a new value pool.
