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The Art of Managing Science
J. Craig Venter, the biologist who led the effort to sequence human DNA, on unlocking the human genome and the importance of building extraordinary teams for long-term results.
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J. Craig Venter, the biologist who led the effort to sequence human DNA, on unlocking the human genome and the importance of building extraordinary teams for long-term results. For more, see the Life’s Work interview in the September 2014 issue of HBR.
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard. I’m here today with J. Craig Venter, a biologist and genetics pioneer, best known for leading the effort to sequence human DNA. He now oversees an institute and two biotech firms. Dr. Venter, thanks so much for joining me today.
J. CRAIG VENTER: Nice talking to you.
ALISON BEARD: You’re known for setting audacious goals and then achieving them more quickly than most would. Why do you think that approach has been so effective for you?
J. CRAIG VENTER: Well, they’re only considered audacious by other people. I’ve never considered them audacious goals. And I consider them achievable and I take pride in doing what we announced that we’re going to do, in achieving these goals. So they only seem, I guess, audacious by comparison to where people are in their existing fields. So with the human genome, there was only because it was set up, it was going to be a 15-year or $5 billion program. But it seemed unconscionable to somebody that a small group could do it in less than a year for a tiny fraction of that amount of money. Right?
And I think that’s the key thing is believing, not false beliefs, but believing that the goals that you’re setting are reasonable. And in my case, I’ve had extraordinary teams that have made the goals achievable. One of my early teachers described my method as jumping off a high diving board into an empty pool, expecting my team to have the pool filled before I hit the bottom.
Also I think people like working on teams, multi-disciplinary teams, with goals and projects much bigger than themselves. For genomics, we had mathematical breakthroughs because we had some of the best algorithm developers and mathematicians, and some of the best technical people in terms of building the computers that hadn’t been built before. And instruments to sequence DNA, biologists to process things by informaticians.
So everybody had to be world-class experts, but they brought their expertise, as I said, to a problem much bigger than themselves. I just find over and over again, people gain a lot of satisfaction by contributing to those kinds of efforts.
ALISON BEARD: Genomics was supposed to revolutionize the drug and health care industries, and you said that it’s just beginning to do that. What industries do you expect to revolutionize with synthetic biology?
J. CRAIG VENTER: Synthetic biology is kind of a broad catch-all term that sort of became the term to replace molecular biology. We define a smaller subset of that called synthetic genomics, where we’re actually chemically riding the DNA front tire chromosomes for designing cells. So it’s hard to actually to envision a field that won’t be impacted by this in some way. Obviously we just announced a deal between Synthetic Genomics and ADM to produce large amounts of Omega-3s from algae cells. So one of our cells is actually going into very large-scale production to produce a healthy supplement.
We’re scaling up and trying to design cells that produce the chemical that is the basis of the plastic in plastic bottles, which currently only comes from oil. So we can reduce co2 requirements by making that from, starting with sugar instead of taking oil out of the ground for all the plastics and plastic bottles.
We’re designing new vaccines. In fact, the US government now has stockpiles of the first synthetic vaccine that we made with Novartis against H7N9 Before there’s ever a first case in the US, we’re potentially ahead of a potential pandemic strain.
All from these new tools. So it’s going to affect medicine, it’s going to affect production of chemicals, it’s going to cut production of food. I think it could lead to a new industrial revolution.
ALISON BEARD: Your Institute still works with both the government entities like DARPA, and also big companies like Novartis. So what are some of the biggest challenges you face with each?
J. CRAIG VENTER: The problems are really not any different, whether working with government agencies– NIH, DARPA, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, or with private companies such as Novartis. It’s a matter of where our conversation started, having the ability to deliver on the agreed-upon goals. Both of my not-for-profit institutes and the two biotech companies, we take the funding very seriously. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from a private investor or from the government. And we try every way we can to deliver on the goals that we’ve discussed. It’s not a different set of rules dealing with industry or the government. And some of the industries we deal with have bigger bureaucracies than the government has. Some are smaller and much easier to deal with, but the reality is the same.
ALISON BEARD: Have you become more skilled at navigating that bureaucracy?
J. CRAIG VENTER: I’ve become more skilled at hiring really good people that can do that.
ALISON BEARD: How do you pick the people you work for? What’s the most important quality you look for in a manager? And what’s the most important qualities you look for in a scientist?
J. CRAIG VENTER: Well, they’re similar because most of our managers are scientists. And despite the notions that come out of academia that scientists can’t be good managers, any scientist with a large program, whether it be a university or an Institute or a company, do have to manage teams and budgets. But we look for people who are creative, that are flexible, that like to be challenged every day, are self-motivating.
And usually people self-select, that in fact, like these larger goals and the big challenges, and know they have something they bring to the table that can make a significant difference.
ALISON BEARD: And what kind of boss are you? Has your leadership style changed over the years?
J. CRAIG VENTER: I’m sure it has. When you go from running a relatively small academic lab to having hundreds of scientists and their teams ultimately reporting to you. Despite what people commonly think, I’m not a micro-manager. I’m a very hands-off manager. I try to hire the best people in the world, and give them the latitude to do what they’re great at. I do try to set the driving goals and the agenda. But in terms of the execution of those, we either decide on those as a team, or in many cases, just by the individuals in charge of their own programs.
ALISON BEARD: You’re known as not only a visionary, but also someone who is just an absolute technical expert in all the fields that your Institute is in. So do you find it difficult to pull back and be hands-off at all?
J. CRAIG VENTER: At times. I’m not known for being a patient person, but maybe that’s something I’ve mastered slightly more over time, realizing that many things take a whole lot longer than I’d like them to. But at the same time, it’s a question of the quality of people you’re working with. When you’re working with great people, they don’t create impatient moments usually. Because you know that things are happening at the best pace with exciting discoveries constantly coming forth.
ALISON BEARD: At the same time, over the course of your career, you’ve also fallen out or broken away from former research and business partners, notably with Celera. So what have you learned from those experiences?
J. CRAIG VENTER: I didn’t fall out, I was fired.
ALISON BEARD: Perhaps even more painful.
J. CRAIG VENTER: That’s a type of falling out, but It was an unusual situation there, and after I sequenced the human genome and raised a billion dollars cash, I was clearly dispensable, in part, because I indicated that I wanted to leave and go back to my Institute. So I wouldn’t call it a falling out. It was more of a shotgun divorce, but you learn from these transitions. It was probably one of the best things that happened because it did force the transition that I intellectually wanted to make, but probably would have stayed there for many more years, even though the technology wasn’t ready.
So basically what we’re doing now with Human Longevity is rebuilding what the Celerian investors potentially would have gotten had I stayed. But Celeras may be 15 years too early to really change medicine. It was just the start of the revolution. So timing plays a big role in all these events and I think I’ve had a very good, long-working relationship. Many of the employees get the Institute have been there over 15 years, some approaching 20 years. Some scientists move from the NIH to the Institute to Celera, and back to the Institute. And now some are joining Human Longevity or Synthetic Genomics.
So I think the people that thrive in the kind of environments I helped create really thrive in the long term. But part of the notion is at my Institute, we don’t have tenure. I am an at-will employee, Sam Smith is an at-will employee. We all know that the reality of this world is you’re only as good as your latest accomplishment. Academic institutions with tenure tend to reward people giving up early in their careers because there’s no risk involved. But really good people are not motivated by having security. They’re motivated by making intellectual breakthroughs.
ALISON BEARD: You persevered through a lot of criticism, controversy, and career setbacks in your life. In one interview you described yourself as a survivor, and said you could have survived 100 professional deaths. So what makes you so resilient, so confident?
J. CRAIG VENTER: Well, you have to believe in what you’re doing in your own processes. And also, I think, my military service in Vietnam taught me a lot at a young age. I was one of the lucky people to serve there and return. As a medic, I dealt with thousands of young men my own age that didn’t make it back. I learned at an early age the worst thing you have to lose is your life. And taking risk and suffering setbacks is part of moving forward. If you don’t take a risk, you will not make any progress.
Then my latest book, Life at the Speed of Light, I discuss all the setbacks that occurred in the route to try and get the first synthetic cell. It’s the kind of research actually the government wouldn’t have funded because it took a long time to work through all the problems and solve them. But I was certain the problems were solvable. I doubted that we could have convinced a grant committee that they would have been. The only proof they were solvable was the final success with it.
ALISON BEARD: Well, Dr. Venter, thank you so much for your time today.
J. CRAIG VENTER: Nice talking to you.
ALISON BEARD: That was genetics pioneer, J. Craig Venter. He’s the subject of our September Life’s Work interview. For more, go to hbr.org.